Unabashed Romance; Real; I Loved This Movie

Rating: 9/10 (21 October 2005)

"Before Sunset" is one of the most unabashedly romantic films I have ever seen.
Even in our age of full disclosure and no privacy there remain moments that this viewer, anyway, has never seen captured on film before.
"Before Sunset" captures some of those moments.
Two adult characters converse. Watching them, you wonder -- and you know that these two characters are wondering the same thing -- where will this conversation go? Is it just an exchange of banal, prepackaged rants and scripts? But, the two characters keep talking, keep talking past rough moments, and awkward discomfort, and strange anecdotes.
After a while of this, they come to say shockingly open and intimate things to each other.
Before you realize that you've been swept off your feet, the conversation has become as intimate as the best sexual act could be.
These two characters are using mere words to reveal hopes, and pains, and vulnerabilities, that we usually sweep from our consciousness, because the world has no room for them ... except during magical moments such as those dramatized in this film.
There was one aspect of "Before Sunset" that didn't work for me. Ethan Hawke, especially, gives a poignantly visual performance. He says things with his eyes and face that he does not convey in words.
Otherwise, though, this film is not visual enough to be fully satisfying as a film. Its charms and power are almost all verbal, all in the script. That being the case, "Before Sunset" would perhaps have been better as a radio play.
The director cheats his audience; he doesn't care about using his camera to allow his audience to view Hawke, Delpy, their powerful and magic interaction, or Paris in a new and high impact way.
But that's a minor complaint. "Before Sunset" swept this viewer off her feet. Days after viewing it, I'm still under its spell. It's appropriate that we understand spells as being cast, primarily, with words, with language. What language does here is truly magic.