Before Sunset (2004). Warner Independent Pictures. Image via The Criterion Collection.
Jesse is answering questions about his novel when he spots Celine in a Paris bookshop. She is the woman he spent one night with in Vienna nine years earlier, and the reason he wrote the book. He has a flight to catch. Before Sunset gives them an afternoon to find out how much of that earlier connection survives meeting again.
Richard Linklater's 2004 sequel runs for 80 minutes. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who share screenplay credit with the director, let the first exchanges sound almost casual. Jesse and Celine talk about work, politics and the city around them. They can still make each other laugh. Gradually, the conversation reaches the appointment they made at the end of Before Sunrise, and the lives they built after it failed.
The apparent ease took considerable preparation. In a July 2004 interview with Salon, Linklater rejected the idea that the dialogue had been improvised. The three writers developed a detailed outline, exchanged pages by email and fax, then rehearsed and rewrote for weeks. Some passages had to hold together in seven- or eight-minute stretches. Knowing the words left Hawke and Delpy free to work on a glance or a small gesture.
That precision is useful when the characters are being evasive. An answer can sound reassuring until the next question reveals what it leaves out. Jesse's account of his marriage and Celine's descriptions of her relationships change as they become less interested in sounding all right. Being remembered by this particular person makes the usual version of their lives harder to maintain.
Linklater told Salon that he and cinematographer Lee Daniel wanted the camera's elaborate movements to feel unobtrusive, as though they were simply following the couple. Paris gives them places to keep walking. On a street, in a cafe or on a boat, a conversation can continue past the point when either person might otherwise have escaped it.
The approaching flight gives every detour a cost. Jesse and Celine have enough history to recognize each other's evasions, but nine years of absence leave plenty they do not know. Hawke and Delpy let affection sit beside embarrassment and anger. Watching someone start to say something, then decide how much to reveal, becomes as suspenseful as the question of whether Jesse will leave.
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