Critics reviews

Real time gives the film its formal rigor and dramatic urgency. With hardly a minute to waste, Jesse and Celine are no longer pausing to take in the sights or to engage with bystanders; the outside world falls away even more. Taking in a single sustained conversation—intricately plotted and mapped, and captured with a discreetly fluid Steadicam in the walk-and-talk scenes—Before Sunset illustrates better than any other Linklater film his gift for creating the illusion of spontaneity.

The character of Jesse can be initially characterized by an unlikely oscillation between "Ethan Hawke" mode—the disenchanted downtown celebrity who'd rather keep it real writing novels, turning down blockbusters... and "Richard Linklater" mode: the everyman intellectual, reading voluminous quantities of philosophy and literature but deliberately never using any words a freshman UT stoner wouldn't use. And in BEFORE SUNSET, Celine becomes rather more "Julie Delpy"...

The movie revisits and essentially reenacts the romantic fantasy of Before Sunrise, delivering the simple pleasures we crave—updates on what happened to the characters after their first encounter, smart and jaunty banter, and a crisp, intoxicating sexual and romantic energy. At the same time, it reveals itself to be something far more meaningful and wholly unexpected: a melancholic contemplation of missed opportunity and an ambivalent reflection on what it means to get older.

It may feel like no other love story if only for its pruning down of all the tangles of relationship and movie romance to one terrifically ominous conversation, yet the emotions it dredges up, lovely and fearful, bond with the audience in an almost classical manner.

If you feel as I do that politics is essential to an understanding of the way the world works, and that such an understanding is essential to the greatest achievements of cinema, maybe you feel, as I do, some ambivalence about embracing what appears to be a masterpiece of apolitical, if not antipolitical, implications, where a politically-minded outburst amounts to an abortive attempt at not only discourse but also self-fulfillment (because for Linklater the two are inextricably linked).

One of the difficulties is that the film makes no distinction between the inevitable, natural processes of aging and change and the ways in which people are worn down by man-made circumstances. Youthful naiveté will and must pass, but a disappointing marriage or an unsatisfying career is not the inevitable result.

The Ophulsian amplitude of the spectacle was completely sustained by the shifting moods of the two former lovers, who try to strike one light note after another and fail, miserable and painfully. Mr. Linklater and his two creative leads have managed a miraculous transformation of the characters from once-callow lovers into grown-ups teetering on the edge of eternity.

This movie is basically a yakfest, but an incredibly fluid and involving one, and if you have any kind of affinity for either of the characters, you're bound to find the picture a kind of miracle. And for good reason: By the time Jesse arrives at Celine's apartment, Linklater has built up this incredible sense of, well, suspense—even though these are just two people talking—but the things they say to each other could literally change their lives, in a heartbeat.

Before Sunrise" was an opalescent picture, one that dazzled with subtle flecks of light. "Before Sunset" has an even subtler texture, and yet its muted patina leaves a more potent, longer-lasting afterglow.

The intelligence of the film is in its mise-en-scène: the articulation of looks, the shot choices, the cutting. At each turning point, Linklater contrives to show the attitudes of both Céline and Jesse... Linklater's style enhances the nuances of the dialogue while making it clear that more is going on in and between these two than what's being said. The result is a complicated and thrilling game that, unlike some diversions we have had lately, does not debase the words "romantic" and "comedy."

Having seen Before Sunset twice, and Before Sunrise again in between, I can't say which film is better. Both seem to fulfill an ambition Godard expressed in the 60s—to achieve "the definitive by chance." Each in its own way attains a kind of perfection while coming across as impromptu and offhand. This is surely a sign of the greatest mastery, an accomplishment that's plainly to the credit of Hawke and Delpy as much as Linklater and Kim Krizan, Linklater's script collaborator on both films.

Independent in every sense of that abused word, "Before Sunset" transcends the ordinary in great part because it takes love seriously, every kind of love, including movie love. And because Linklater now wears his heart on his sleeve, he has made a film that in its joy, optimism and aesthetic achievement keeps faith with American cinema at its finest.