Before Sunset [2004]

In Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater’s brilliant sleeper hit, we got introduced to the American dude Jesse and the French belle Celine, as they spent a night in Vienna speaking to each other. Nine years later, they chance upon each other, but under completely different circumstances altogether. Jesse has written a novel that has made him a minor celebrity, but his family life is anything but happy – in fact all these years the only girl he’s ever dreamt of is Celine. Celine, on the other hand, works as an activist, and these nine years have only made her more cynical by the day; her on-and-off love life too never really helped her out. And now, as these two people start catching up on each other in the streets of Paris, slowly the layers of cynicism and detachment start getting peeled off, and we become aware of all the personal disappointments, regrets, disaffections and failures that have ensured that they remain hardly as naïve as they were during that blissful night a decade back. As with Before Sunrise, this one too keeps us completely engaged despite being (or rather, because it is) a loquacious film, thanks to the marvelous script and Linklater’s smooth and tightly controlled direction. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, too, have done the movie no harm with their absolutely wonderful on-screen chemistry, making this one of those rare sequels that manages to work so well.





Director: Richard Linklater
Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama
Language: English
Country: US