I'm not sure if it's the actors or their conversation that makes the film appealing, maybe both, but it works in a sweet, thought-provoking way.
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In 1995 director Richard Linklater made a romantic movie called "Before Sunrise," starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. The story was rather gutsy in that it focused on two young people just talking. And talking and talking. But their talk was endlessly fascinating, and the movie was well received by critics.
Not that movies about two people simply talking to one another is particularly new. In 1981 Louis Malle made the successful "My Dinner With Andre," wherein two old friends sit and talk and talk and talk over dinner. Such films are rare because audiences, especially American audiences, are used to seeing things happen on screen lickety split--action, excitement, cars blowing up, fart jokes, that kind of thing--and they're used to quick edits where nothing stays in front of them longer than a few seconds. Even the classic 1957 drama "Twelve Angry Men" was questioned before coming to the screen because studios feared that a whole movie about a jury locked in a room talking to one another would not sustain the interest of an audience for very long. The fact is, if the dialogue is good enough, it will sustain a mature audience's attention, even if such movies don't all do well at the box office.
It's a tribute to the resolve of writer/director Linklater even to attempt a story about two adults behaving like two adults rather than like retarded adolescents or fantastic superheroes. That is not, however, to say that all of Linklater's efforts have paid off for me, personally, but I can't knock the guy for trying things that are different. Consider his surprisingly amusing "Slacker" (1991), his insightful "Dazed and Confused" (1993), followed by his tepid "Newton Boys" (1998), the pretentious and boring "Waking Life" (2001), and then the energetic and funny "School of Rock" (2003). Now, I understand that one of his upcoming projects is a remake of "The Bad News Bears." How's that for diversity?
Anyway, 2004's "Before Sunset" is a continuation of the saga of Jesse and Celine begun nine years earlier. Hawke and Delpy return as long-lost lovers, and, if anything, their romance and their dialogue are as stimulating and charming as ever.
In the previous film the two had spent a summer day and night together in Vienna, then agreed to meet the following December. It never happened. Their paths would not cross again until Paris, where this second movie takes up the story. Jesse is at a book signing for his best-selling, autobiographical novel "This Time," about his brief encounter nine years before with Celine. As he hopes, Celine hears about the event and walks into the bookstore looking for him. Reunited, they spend another day together.
Linklater's interest is not only in romance, however; it is in the nature of relationships and in this case in the influence of time on relationships. It's on fate and coincidence and destiny. It's an exploration of what happens to lives once they've crossed; how people affect one another; how small, seemingly insignificant events or big, consequential ones can equally change our lives in ways we don't even think about.
Jesse tells his book-signing audience that his life hasn't been filled with guns or violence, so he couldn't write about such things; but it has been filled with drama, so that's what he writes about. Clearly, the short time he spent with Celine so long ago had a profound effect on him. The brief talk he gives to his admirers is a fitting preface to the story that ensues.
The camera follows the couple as they walk around Paris chatting, reminiscing, and learning more about one another. Clearly, Jesse has been holding a torch for Celine all this time, but it's less clear what Celine's feelings are. She calls their previous meeting "a moment in time that is forever gone." But does she mean it?
Their conversation is generally witty, joking, and happy until near the end, where things inevitably get more serious. Their lives are different now than they were nine years before, and the audience feels the discomfort they must feel, the ecstatic awkwardness of their connection. Throughout their encounter they are engaging and intelligent, each playing coyly around the ultimate questions: Where have they been, what are they doing now, and where are they going? More important, are they happy with the way things turned out? Their answers are surprising yet perfectly understandable. Things are not always as they appear.
Would they change anything now, if it could bring them greater happiness, or will they move on, not to see each other again for another nine years? I mean, Linklater could continue this narrative until he and his actors are wrinkled and gray. And I have no doubt that thought has crossed his mind more than once.
One of the things that's also fascinating about the movie is how it deals with the perception of memory. The couple argue amiably about whether they had sex the one night in Vienna they were together. He says they did; she says they didn't. Do we imagine or embroider things about the past? Do we glorify the good, or do we block out and forget the bad? Celine tells us, "Memory's a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past." Well, yeah.... Moreover, she is more troubled in her present than she initially lets on, as is he. The next question is what to do about it.
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[release]13647[/release]