by Bruce E. Parry
Ethan (Hawke, playing Jesse) and Julie (Delpy, playing Celine) meet again in Paris nine years after their initial night of romance and love in Vienna in Before Sunrise (1995). They hadn’t met in six months as planned. They hadn’t exchanged addresses or phone numbers, so they were unable to find each other in the interim. Jesse is now an author whose book is a recap of that one night. He’s at a Paris bookstore and Celine comes to see him. Thus begins the second film of the trilogy.
I’ll tell you right now—its brought up in the film—that Ethan Hawke has obviously aged (especially if you see the films back to back as I did—and Julie Delpy seems not to have aged. That was somewhat disconcerting, particularly since the dialog doesn’t really affirm the reality.
The film leaves me with the same feeling I had after seeing Before Sunrise, but this time, the feeling seems appropriate. They connect. They are still in love. But he is married and she’s had any number of relationships, and most of the film is them catching up. They are unable to recapture what they had, but they try. At the end of the film, it seems to imply that they have succeeded. Nevertheless, it is a circuitous route.
The film is basically talking heads. They talk in a cafe, in the park, on the boat on the Seine, in the car and in her apartment, but the film—written by Director Richard Linklater and Hawke and Delpy themselves—is essentially dialog. This could be a real shortcoming, but it was all right in this instance. I guess that’s what getting back together after nine years is like. You talk, you reconstruct, you try to fill in gaps that will never be filled in. As with Before Sunrise, I have had this experience and it feels a lot like the film: unsettled.
One comment on the dialog. As with the first film, there is a lot of philosophizing and conjecturing about relationships, people, men and women. In this film, one section of the dialog is especially focused on discussing what women are like and what they do. I enjoyed it, but always feel awkward about such generalizations. I watched the film alone, so I don’t know how women watching the film might feel.
The cinematography makes up for anything that might have been missing. The long takes are mesmerizing. There is one of the two walking and talking in a park that is unmissable. It is absorbing and actually pulls the viewer into the conversation in just the way that the characters are absorbed. Again, the film is beautiful, this time having been shot in Paris. It fortunately leaves out most of the tourist attractions and shows the Paris that Parisians see, because our characters are not tourists.
After Before Sunrise, I conjectured on how the writers might approach the sequel. Once they chose the theme, in many ways, the rest of the film is set. The characters talk about relationships, about men and women, about their lives and their dreams. At first, they beat around the bush and approach each other with reservations. But as the story unfolds, they become more honest and more real. In the end, it turns out, inevitably, that they are miserable in their lives. They realize—and they each reveal to the other—that they are still in love.
In a lot of ways, this is a set up for the third film, Before Midnight (2013) which, like the first two, was made with a nine year gap between films. I will watch it soon and blog on it, but it seems to me to be set up already and I’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t develop the themes set out in this film. I am still interested and looking forward to see how they bring this to a conclusion. Or will there be a fourth?
Copyright Bruce E. Parry
Ethan (Hawke, playing Jesse) and Julie (Delpy, playing Celine) meet again in Paris nine years after their initial night of romance and love in Vienna in Before Sunrise (1995). They hadn’t met in six months as planned. They hadn’t exchanged addresses or phone numbers, so they were unable to find each other in the interim. Jesse is now an author whose book is a recap of that one night. He’s at a Paris bookstore and Celine comes to see him. Thus begins the second film of the trilogy.
I’ll tell you right now—its brought up in the film—that Ethan Hawke has obviously aged (especially if you see the films back to back as I did—and Julie Delpy seems not to have aged. That was somewhat disconcerting, particularly since the dialog doesn’t really affirm the reality.
The film leaves me with the same feeling I had after seeing Before Sunrise, but this time, the feeling seems appropriate. They connect. They are still in love. But he is married and she’s had any number of relationships, and most of the film is them catching up. They are unable to recapture what they had, but they try. At the end of the film, it seems to imply that they have succeeded. Nevertheless, it is a circuitous route.
The film is basically talking heads. They talk in a cafe, in the park, on the boat on the Seine, in the car and in her apartment, but the film—written by Director Richard Linklater and Hawke and Delpy themselves—is essentially dialog. This could be a real shortcoming, but it was all right in this instance. I guess that’s what getting back together after nine years is like. You talk, you reconstruct, you try to fill in gaps that will never be filled in. As with Before Sunrise, I have had this experience and it feels a lot like the film: unsettled.
One comment on the dialog. As with the first film, there is a lot of philosophizing and conjecturing about relationships, people, men and women. In this film, one section of the dialog is especially focused on discussing what women are like and what they do. I enjoyed it, but always feel awkward about such generalizations. I watched the film alone, so I don’t know how women watching the film might feel.
The cinematography makes up for anything that might have been missing. The long takes are mesmerizing. There is one of the two walking and talking in a park that is unmissable. It is absorbing and actually pulls the viewer into the conversation in just the way that the characters are absorbed. Again, the film is beautiful, this time having been shot in Paris. It fortunately leaves out most of the tourist attractions and shows the Paris that Parisians see, because our characters are not tourists.
After Before Sunrise, I conjectured on how the writers might approach the sequel. Once they chose the theme, in many ways, the rest of the film is set. The characters talk about relationships, about men and women, about their lives and their dreams. At first, they beat around the bush and approach each other with reservations. But as the story unfolds, they become more honest and more real. In the end, it turns out, inevitably, that they are miserable in their lives. They realize—and they each reveal to the other—that they are still in love.
In a lot of ways, this is a set up for the third film, Before Midnight (2013) which, like the first two, was made with a nine year gap between films. I will watch it soon and blog on it, but it seems to me to be set up already and I’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t develop the themes set out in this film. I am still interested and looking forward to see how they bring this to a conclusion. Or will there be a fourth?
Copyright Bruce E. Parry
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