Ecstatic

Rating: 10/10 (3 May 2007)

Paris, 2003. Jesse, an American writer in his early 30s, is signing books and giving a talk at Shakespeare & Company, the famed Parisian bookseller that first printed "Ulysses" in 1922. The book chronicles a one-night stand nearly a decade earlier that he just can't get out of his mind. As he is about to finish, he locks eyes for a moment on a particular face in the stacks: Celine, the woman he met nine years before on a summer night in Vienna. For anyone who has seen and loved "Before Sunrise", the film chronicling that meeting, the moment of recognition in this sequel comes as an all-time great moment in cinema...five minutes in, and I knew I was in the presence of greatness.
Celine and Jesse go for a cup of coffee at a café, traversing a half-dozen windy, ancient Parisian streets, and they talk about careers and education, what has led them to this place. Interestingly enough, the dialog was largely scripted by the actors, and they both express (non-acting) interests that mirror the real lives of Hawke (a successful novelist) and Delpy (an environmental activist and musician who has recorded a couple of albums); they also play to their ages and they play characters that are reasonably successful in the outward sense, so a great aura of realism is maintained with little effort. This allows the dialog to ebb and flow, to continue easily for the 80 minute duration of this real-time walk through the streets and gardens of Paris, through life, career, love, lust, politics.
And it all may seem very boring to you, if what you expect is "drama" and "event"; if you expect your romances to be full of sex and unbelievable situations and jealousy and hysteria. "Before Sunset" is 80 minutes of two very intelligent, articulate people reacquainting themselves with each other, reawakening to youthful aspirations and romantic hopes that they assumed were withering. It's a paean to French ideals and American excesses, to Paris and to music and to architecture and literature, all conveyed in the expressions and words of two hopeless romantics and in the passion their director has for the noble idea, so rarely practiced, of the importance and power of each day, each hour, each minute of life.
I'm going on a bit perhaps, but I cannot think of a more "real", knowing film about love, about the lost past and the hopeful future than this minimalist tour through the eyes of a brazen Texan and a talkative Parisian. It's easy for me to fall in love with actresses, but Julie Delpy is simply unbelievable here and I've rarely felt more jealous in a movie than I did of Ethan Hawke (who I rarely like, but seems perfect here).
There are many wonderful allusions to film history in this hour and a third but the most potent is the short cruise down the Seine near the end, which brings to mind most obviously two of the most romantic and expressionist films in French history, Vigo's "L'Atalante" (1934) and Carax' "Les Amants du Pont Neuf" (1991). I was wondering if this film would end there, but instead the couple detours to Celine's apartment for the stunning, very appropriate finale.