It is the most realistic romantic movie I've ever seen...

Rating: 9/10 (3 September 2004)

Before Sunset picks up nine years later and, unbelievably, it is an even better film. Actually, I'm not sure which of the two films is really better, except that "Before Sunset" is more relevant at this stage of my life and "Before Sunrise" is now more nostalgic. They are both so perfect in every way, and I can't think of another film like them. I guess Linklater was influenced by that genre of French films in which "a man and a woman have a conversation about life and love and not much else happens." The difference is that so often in the French films the conversation is banal, pretentious or self-important, posing as something more profound. Linklater's dialog is so natural; it moves from the mundane to the intelligent without a single false note. Both films were written and directed by Richard Linklater who does this kind of talky, real-time, thoughtful and realistic slice of life better than anyone (his film, "Slacker," was a masterpiece). The story of Before Sunrise/Sunset is about serendipitously finding one's soulmate (for lack of a better word) at the wrong time, and desperately trying to forget and move on, but utterly failing. In the case of the couple in the film, they discover each other when they are students traveling on a train through Europe; he's American, she's French. When they unexpectedly meet again nine years later they learn that, in the intervening years, neither had found anything remotely close to what they shared in their brief time together, and they reconnect so easily, it's as if only a couple of months had passed. Once again, as in the first film, their timing is off; neither are free to drop everything else in their lives to take the plunge and play out the romance. As the Ethan Hawke character puts it so well, "It is a choice between being my best self or my honest self."