Review of Before Sunset (2004) by Nick O — 18 Nov 2013

"Before Sunset" -- maybe even more than "Before Sunrise" prior to it -- is one of the few films I've maybe ever seen that's so honest and joyful it blatantly defies criticism or definition. Each work is something special, "Sunrise's" in-the-moment romance sans any technological distractions, "Sunset's" nine-years-in-the-making morning-after. Both constant conversations of celluloid of which you feel every minute, in the absolute best possible way.

I'm spoiled seeing "Sunset" only a day after watching its predecessor for the first time. I wonder what'd it be like to live your own life for nine years after making such an identification with these characters, and then coming back to them. That's maybe the greatest pleasure of "Before Sunset": it so wondrously REMEMBERS American traveler Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Frenchwoman Celine (Julie Delpy, even more beautiful now than ever before. Well, "now" being 2004. Let me just...punch her name into Google along with "2013"....).

And oh my God, I know I say it a lot with things, but it hurts. Really, you can watch "Sunrise" and "Sunset" back to back and still perfectly sense the years of nostalgia and remembrance between these two people. And by playing the film out in eighty sun-kissed, lyrical Paris minutes director Richard Linklater (as well as Hawke and Delpy, with whom he wrote the script) lets every inch of "Before Sunset" breathe on its own and speak for itself, like a newborn unto the world. It's a mystical place, full of regrets, but at least they'll always have Vienna.