Why didn't they ask me to marry them? I would've said no, but at least they could have asked.

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2016)

In Before Sunrise they were young twenty somethings who had not yet truly found 'the one', and through one night, experienced something fleeting and magical that almost seemed to fill that missing piece of the puzzle. They were strangers and there was nothing tricky or hidden to be surveyed, and their emotional baggage was light; it was a straightforward meet cute. Initially it seems to be again one of those chance encounters that happens only in movies. We are under the impression that Jesse is over the moon to once again see Celine, and that she also wants the chance to make up for not being there at the train station. They fall into the same conversational rhythms that seem so familiar, and then slowly, Linklater reveals their new lives.
9 years ago they were relatively unbroken, and innocent, and unburdened by life. And it was a truly magical moment too, but it was just that; a moment, constricted by time. Here, they are again constricted, but not in the same way, and they know it too; Jesse extends and extends the encounter beyond what they initially agree to, a coffee, and desperately grabs at any chance to rekindle that moment and feeling - he will not again leave her on that platform. In the back of their minds, obstructions linger: a broken marriage, a long distance boyfriend, career aspirations that are miles apart.
Jesse has not forgotten. In fact, he reveals, he has thought on it at just about any spare moment, and daringly, right before his wedding (this seems to be a rather careful treading of the waters, testing how receptive Celine will be). It is not immediately evident, but we notice (shots of the last encounter run through Jesse's mind as he dodges reporter's questions). The dialogue is timid and tentative, and hesitant of the topic on the audience's minds; they update each other on their lives, and seem to take an eternity to broach the all important question of relationship status. It is masterful how Linklater sets up their defenses - well Celine's, because Jesse is all but spilling by about halfway through. She acts forgetful; did they have sex, or didn't they? Where exactly did they visit again? Meanwhile Jesse puts on a cynical, jaded mask, and as they muse on the world's affairs, he criticises the modern sense of entitlement, but we and Celine see right through this; he is almost begging for another Vienna. When she jokingly proposes a scenario, he brushes clean a park bench and eagerly throws her onto his lap. That would have worked 9 years ago.
They muse that maybe they are only good at the brief encounters, the ones that seem to last a small eternity in the romance novels and movies. Jesse throws his head into his hands in regret, and glances sidewards to see if Celine has the same reaction. She does not betray it easily. He remembers every crystal clear detail of his memory, including thinking of her as he walks into a deli with an umbrella on his wedding day, and she counters that she lived only two streets away, as if she is slowly beginning to feel it too. And then she cracks in the car, and reveals that she too has been dwelling on it endlessly, and that she is just as vulnerable, and we begin to understand how that one night has shaped their romantic expectations ever since. She has written a song about it, performed so tenderly by Delphy, and though she jokes that she inserts different names into it depending on whom she is wooing, we know the truth.
Before Sunset asks more questions of Jesse and Celine. It offers the same feeling, and the same love, but now they are older, more cumbersome, and juggling real life obstacles that make a dreamy night in Vienna no longer possible. And yet, there is still something between them. At first, they put on a pretense that they have their lives together, and that they are not bothered by the missed opportunity. Then they confess this is not the case. And then slowly but gradually, in the same space of time as before, they fall for each other again. "Baby, you are gonna miss that plane", she croons, and Jesse responds that he knows. And we all know it too.