Movie Reviews

Before Sunset is the sequel to Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, a film I admired for its uniqueness, but which I ultimately found not very satisfying and not particularly interesting.

Having now watched this sequel -- which involves the two characters from the original finally meeting again nine years after their 'conversational one-night stand' and embarking on another half-day-long flirtation -- I think I'm better able to understand why the first film didn't captivate me. My main problem with Before Sunrise is that the two characters, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), had nothing invested in one another; they had no 'deep' connection (their superficial flirtatiousness doesn't count), and considering that they only spent about a dozen or so hours together, there wasn't any sort of 'history' behind them to give their relationship any weight.

Before Sunset takes place nine years later though, and now they have many much more substantial things to talk about. Like, why didn't they meet up again after that one night together in Vienna, like they said they would? And although they only spent one night together, their 'history' now includes nine years of wondering what might have been had they not both gone their separate ways. If the first film was somewhat superficial in a 'here and now'-only sense, this film is much deeper as Jesse and Celine now carry the weight of those nine sometimes-rocky years with them.

Consequently, the first film seems very light in hindsight, compared to Before Sunset. Sunset still manages to retain a lot of the first film's light-hearted charm, but it also feels heavier, deeper, and more substantial, and I liked it quite a bit more. The weird thing is that seeing the first one, and being a bit disappointed by it, seems to have been instrumental in developing my appreciation of this one.