|
|
Film
|
|
Before Sunset
Filming a perfect romantic drama is the cinematic equivalent to meeting the love of your life twice. But Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have done it.
Friday, July 2, 2004
By Larry Carroll
|
Anyone who truly loves the movies knows that the toughest genre to succeed in is the romantic film. Practically every movie has a romance in it, and just about every one fails to make the audience believe that two people belong together for any other reason than simply because they are the male and female leads.
So, what you normally get stuck with is by-the-numbers romantic schmaltz (Sweet November), high-concept, unrealistic romantic comedy (How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days), or teen “Mr. Right” romances that tell us love can wrap itself up in a neat little bow (She’s All That). Arguably the greatest romantic ending in a movie belongs to The Graduate because it’s so frighteningly honest: the chase is over, and as the two lovers awkwardly make eye contact with each other at the back of that bus, they realize that it’s time for the real work to begin.
In the last decade, you could probably count on one hand the truly special romances in film. Although far too few people have seen it, the love-at-first-sight connection between Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) in Richard Linklater’s magical 1995 romance Before Sunrise still ranks at the top of these in terms of chemistry, realism, and emotional investment. And it also ended perfectly: one silent shot after another of the places the two young lovers shared, just for a moment, only to separate again with a half-hearted promise to try to recapture the flame six months later.
After nine years of being asked whether his two characters ever did reunite, writer-director Richard Linklater decides to answer that question with Before Sunset, a horribly ill-conceived idea that reunites the two young lovers as they’ve entered their thirties and find themselves dealing with harsher realities of the world. News of a sequel to this film seemed every bit as scary as The Sting 2 or The Manchurian Candidate remake with Denzel Washington.
As terrifying as the thought of revisiting perfection may be, however, Linklater somehow pulls it off brilliantly. By the end of the movie, you’ll find yourself in love with this couple again, in love with the notion of finding a soul mate, and reminiscing about their past as if you’re looking back on a lost romance of your own. Somehow, improbably, Linklater has now made two of the most romantic films of the last decade, both featuring the same characters.
Before Sunset begins nine years after the first film, as Jesse is wrapping up a book tour in Europe to support a romance novel he wrote about that fourteen-hour-relationship in Vienna. Celine, who has read the novel that finds the names changed but the details unmistakable, stands in the back of the room and watches her former lover. When their eyes meet, all that chemistry and enthusiasm and mutual adoration comes hurtling back at them, and they have no choice – they go for another walk together.
There’s your plot, folks. And that’s all Before Sunset needs to get going – just putting these two characters together is like lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite. The two of them talk – about that night, about each other, about politics, about philosophy – and even though they often don’t agree, you know they’re perfect together.
You can’t help but get as drunk off their conversation as they do. Hawke and Delpy, who wrote the script along with Linklater, make points and retractions, play poker with each other as they hide and reveal their romantic investments, and bring out each other’s beauty in their laughs, smiles and subtle, caring touches. These two films together have created deep, complicated, flawed characters that you become attached to, and want to see together.
The seemingly gimmicky concept of shooting the film in real time (the movie lasts 85 minutes, exactly as long as the two are together) is a brilliant artistic stroke that is appropriate for the film’s story. In Sunrise, the two characters were in their early twenties, in a vacation state of mind, and appropriately treated love as something that could be experienced, savored, and put on lay-a-way.
In Sunset, they are more aware of the world and the time limits that apply to them everyday. Jesse’s looming plane ride serves as an effective narrative device that limits these two to making their re-connection quickly, and then having to confront it. As a result, most of the film takes place in five or six-minute, unedited chunks that make the conversation seem more natural, as well as more precious.
Delpy and Hawke, in a combined 45 years making movies, have never found characters like Jesse and Celine, who they’ve brought to life while the characters have returned the favor. Their performances are so good here that you could turn down the volume and simply watch the way they look at each other, flirt with each other, recoil during some scenes and want to hold each other just a few moments later.
The dialogue is also exceptional, but the fact that you don’t even need it shows what truly great performances the two leads are turning in. Linklater films Paris beautifully, and his inclusion of subtle relationship metaphors (the boat, the staircase) show the confidence of a director who gives his audience something to look for, but only if they want to look for it. Linklater and his actors have grown, as have the characters in this story, and if Before Sunset has one thing to teach it’s that the wisdom of age is nothing of which to be ashamed.
| Before Sunset has an ending that deserves to have entire books devoted to it, but one that should never be revealed to someone who has yet to see the film. It all ends on two beautiful, earth-shatteringly meaningful, completely meaningless words.
|
It’s every bit as perfect as the original’s conclusion, and is sure to infuriate couples even as it makes them leave the theatre holding hands. These are movies that, like love itself, you have to experience and you have to trust. And if you do, the rewards are endless.
|
|
|
|
|
 Email
|
 Print
|
|
|
|
|
|