what fascinates and interests almost works to annoy the viewer, but Linklater does come closest to Bergman here

Rating: 10/10 (19 March 2007)

Before Sunset provides us not so much a sequel as a continuing development in the lives of these characters, who are starting to embody the neuroses and deeply-held desires that neither want to admit to until it's at the most crucial and tragic of times. Jessie (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), who first met on a train in Vienna in 1994, meet again nine years later as Jessie has published a book which is based on that night they had together. He's in Paris, they meet again, and before he has his plane back to the states they talk, and talk, and talk, and unlike in the first film there are no asides. It's just two people who at first talk about concerns that came up for them the first time, if a bit more pragmatic: what it is to have concern over the environment, to live in the USA, to be involved enough in a relationship. There's even a moment of deja-vu where they talk about reincarnation and a respect for faith if not an embracing of it. But then we also get to see something much deeper in each side that Jessie's book and mere re-appearance for Celine brings out a memory that has become hyper-realized, and vice-versa.
Like Bergman's films, in particular Scenes From a Marriage (if not as wholly successful because of its short running time here), Linklater provides us with characters who have no problem saying what's on their mind, in the immediate sense anyway. Jessie is even more digging-in with his cynicism and wit, and Celine with her opinions on the world at large, family and on past relationships. But when it comes to getting at their connection, it's very fragile and even unattainable because of each side's own flaws. If the two of them were happy, to be certain, there would be no movie, but it's the characters' connection to that one night in Vienna, and the second meeting that was supposed to take place six months later and never happened, and how it cripples their own romantic lives that becomes very interesting yet shallow at the same time. Perhaps this is the best way to show how smart, functional people become dysfunctional in their respective social stratospheres- Jessie is married and with a kid, but not very happy in it, and Celine is in bad relationship after bad relationship- but the singular, glossy night of years past has become a bitter shrine of sorts amid their respective neuroses.
Linklater shares that incredible Bergman quality of cutting past the already sharp intellect to the emotional matter of the parties, even if it doesn't feel totally complete; I want to see how their story might end, however obvious it should and probably would be. One knows this could never work in real life, aside from the practical-side of it all, yet it's this that makes it all the more watchable. This, plus the incredibly natural repore of the actors, as Hawke and Delpy, as to be expected, seem like they aren't even on a script but are being filmed by Linklater on the fly as his camera captures the given-luscious scapes of Paris in afternoon, and the dialog is still as fresh and inviting as ever. If it lacks anything from the first it's an greater sense of the possibility for romance, since this time the sense of romance is entangled in loss and questions that Celine and Jessie want answered, however conscious they want them answered or not. But as with the first one, I still loved being around these two, who can expound a mouthful on a subject that we all might talk about, almost shockingly similar (one bit I liked a lot was Celine's story of going to Poland), and then in a slight cloud of romanticism.
It ends ambiguous, maybe too ambiguous, as I found myself saying 'huh, what', but it ties into what Jessie tells the reporters at the press conference early in the film: one may take away something from this tale, or someone else another, but there it is, clear as day. Before Sunset is a straightforward romance, and proud of it, being both straightforward in romantic connection and as sharp as anything you'd never find in your local cineplex. One of Linklater's best.