Neil Young’s Film Lounge – Before Sunset

Published on: March 23rd, 2004

BEFORE SUNSET

7/10

USA 2004 : Richard LINKLATER : 80 mins

Commendably short and beguilingly sweet (if somewhat slight) the shamelessly romantic Before Sunset reunites Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) nine years after their night of passion and conversation in Vienna chronicled in Linklater’s Before Sunset. Sunrise ran 101 minutes and covered just over 14 hours of story, while Sunset‘s 80 minutes unspools in something very close to real time as the couple – briefly glimpsed in one of the dreams that constituted Linklater’s Waking Life (2001) – walk and talk, talk and walk around Celine’s native Paris.

The long, Steadicam-filmed, semi-improvised scenes take place in a handful of locations: the Shakespeare & Company bookshop where novelist Jesse is promoting his latest work; a street, where the pair discuss why they didn’t meet up as arranged six months after their first rendezvous; a cafe, where they talk about the state of the world before turning to their own lives and relationships aboard a bateau-mouche on the Seine and then in the back of the limousine that’s taking Jesse to the airport, followed by a coda at Celine’s flat…

To say any more would be grossly unfair: the film unfolds at its own calm pace and coyly keeps us guessing right up to the last minute about the resolution (or lack of). It’s slightly disappointing that Linklater doesn’t make more use of Sunrise footage showing his stars – now in their early thirties – as fresh-faced twentysomethings, in the way that Stephen Soderbergh deployed 60s Terence Stamp clips from Poor Cow as backstory for The Limey.

But perhaps he’ll come up with something along those lines for the DVD. Or perhaps we’ll have to wait until next time: because there’s the tantalising possibility of a further sequel nine years down the line (After Sunset?). Delpy, Hawke, Linklater and co-scripwriter Kim Krizan have embarked on a project that would amount to a fictional variation on Michael Apted’s 7 Up documentaries, one that can only deepen and richen with each passing decade.

1st August, 2004
(seen 15th July : Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne : press show)

by Neil Young

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