Harry here... OH MAN - I'm dying to see this one! I love BEFORE SUNRISE to death and it sounds like Linklater and his actors have again made a film that takes you away into the world of these two characters and what is in their heads and lives and wraps you up and makes you wish it will never stop. So good to hear this one works!
Dear Harry,
I just got back from Berlin where I saw “Before Sunset”. I haven’t seen anything posted on your webpage so I said I might as well send you a review as I haven’t done so before and to be honest it isn’t something I would usually do, but I was so taken with this movie and over the last couple of days I’ve enjoyed having it with me and how the memory of it lingers around.
Some of you may not agree, which is the great thing about reviews in so far as you don’t have to, but for me, “Before Sunset” was an absolutely perfect cinema going experience on a pure level and it was a pleasure to spend an hour and a half with these two people again. Emotional, human, simple, romantic.
Not once during the movie was I aware that it was Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy, they are and always have been those wonderful characters Jese and Celine.
I was curious as to how the movie would begin and surprised at how easy it was to slip back into their lives. Jese is in Paris for a book signing based on his experiences in the first movie. The book has become a “minor Bestseller” and through some simple editing we see glimpses of Celine and Jese on the train at the beginning of the first movie and then a very simple cut to Celine standing just out of sight, watching Jese philosophise badly about love and people and life experience. There’s no big rush into each others arms, no soundtrack pulling us in the right direction, it’s all very real and that’s what works so well to the films advantage.
I enjoyed listening to them talk again, revisiting their pasts. Did either of them show up at the train station six months later? I’ll let you find out for yourselves, but the movie rolls along. Sometimes frustrating, because you obviously know and want them to be together but they slowly work each other out and the ending just quietly blew me away. It is by far the coolest end to a movie since Jean Paul Belmondo blew his blue head off in “Pierrot le Fou”.
I don’t really want to say too much more about it, because this Film is a gem that is waiting to be discovered by you all. If you didn’t like the first one then you won’t like this, but Linklater has done a fantastic job however this is one of those movies where the film maker mantel must be shared between the three of them equally.
Each scene unfolds at a leisurely pace but lurking in the background is that sense of time ebbing away. Like everything in life, nothing lasts forever, but fate or destiny or souls do come full circle and for these two characters it was time for them to meet again, because the yearning for each other was so huge that it would only be a matter of time and for those of you who have waited, that time is now.
And as a footnote to the above, I’d just like to say God Bless Nina Simone,
