Before Sunset

Rating: 10/10 (4 February 2011)

I think those of us in our thirties will really respond to BEFORE SUNSET as we did to BEFORE SUNRISE when we were twenty. I think those in my age group will have a special place for these two movies because they fell within our time, as if a voice speaking for us. But, ultimately, the idea of unrequited love is universal—how many of us truly loved this certain someone, that first true love, only to find ourselves married or linked to another, although we will forever remember that girl/boy who got away? My heart both melted and warmed as I revisited BEFORE SUNSET since I first watched it back when I was a little younger in 2005, still in my twenties, but approaching my thirties. However, in 1995, when BEFORE SUNRISE was made, I was so young, a teenager with the future ahead of me(in essence, two years later I'd be married, and the next 12 work in a factory, before losing that job gave way to a possible brighter future)and so the plot of two people, an American young man touring Europe, running into, by chance(or dare I say it—gulp—fate )a lovely Parisian woman, the two sparking conversation, before remaining together throughout the day and night, falling in love in the process. I secretly am a romantic at heart—although that side of me is often hidden away—and so BEFORE SUNRISE & BEFORE SUNSET have a way of really reaching me, holding me in their grip, and I hate when those movies end. It's nearly improbable, the idea that two people who would never meet in Vienna, find each other in Paris as Ethan Hawke has written his experiences with Julie Delpy in a novella which is a success. They pick up right where they left off, with relationship problems(he is unhappy in his marriage, probably because his wife is not Delpy, and she can not find a substitute for Hawke), discussing intimately details which have accumulated over the last nine years since the last time they saw each other. It starts with small talk and eventually both admit and confront the disappointments of being apart and never recovering from that moment in their lives which forever remains with them. And, Paris is the backdrop, the two walking and chatting, as if one 80 minute long take, quite an impressive feat for director Linklater who allows us to partake in their reunion.
I have equal feelings frustration, joy, and sadness, when I watch these two movies because I want them together and feel like life so often is like this..those who truly should be together aren't, while so many marriages are so unfulfilled because the love that is obvious between Hawke and Delpy so often doesn't exist in a formalized union, a format which is conducted and composed. I'm frustrated because I never communicated my love for the girl I deeply cared for and admired, never even having that moment that Hawke and Delpy have in spades. At least they had this one night, the pain of nothing more than that thrives during the entire running time for BEFORE SUNSET. I think the most telling and wonderful moment was Delpy's song, "The Waltz", succumbed to Hawke's pleas for her to sing to him with her guitar—it is about him and her feelings of that night and how it continues on, I could only smile, with tears, because it just reiterates to me how life is unfair and how love isn't always meant to be. Am I the only one who sympathizes with Hawke who stares at her forlornly, not wanting to leave her apartment even though his flight is upcoming? I think it's safe to say that he wants this time together, this day to never end. I'm glad Linklater doesn't allow us to see them separate. Delpy, I just adore her in this movie. When she hugs Hawke, I'm overcome with a sense of depression, mixed with comfort that at least she gets to embrace the man she will always love, her one true love that no other man will be able to replace, yet grieve in my very soul that for nine years they haven't been able to do so due to mistakes and missed opportunities. Both actors really give us rich characterizations, ad-libbing some of their dialogue, I figure, yet creating two very elaborate, distinct people. I remember thinking a few years ago that BEFORE SUNRISE as a whole is the equivalent of those scenes in average Hollywood rom-coms where music overlaps what two people are saying to each other as they hang out and spend time together, because of lazy writing and idea that the movie-going public might not actually enjoy a film that is "talky". I don't necessarily consider BEFORE SUNRISE/SUNSET as arty, although the two characters talk about everything that pops into their heads and what I think really works is that they fully enjoy each other's company. I think that's important. Often in rom-coms, it starts with two people who can't stand to be around each other—You've Got Mail—eventually, though, the couple fall in love. Not in the case of these two films where two people from polar opposite worlds find that they really have a chemistry viable, can agree—and in some cases disagree—about issues and beliefs, yet accept their differences and talk intently about them, share and take in the luxurious environs around them while they do so. You know, if anything, I can simply sit and watch Delpy for the running time, her smile just overwhelms me to my very core and I can reason why Hawke has never forgotten her, moved on past their night together, and has a degree of difficulty leaving her now that he has found her once again. To me, there's nothing like that smile, the kind of smile that softens you, grabs your heart in a clinched fist and squeezes you into submission. God, I heart that woman.