It’s been nine years since the release of “Before Sunrise,” and this exemplary sequel is worth the wait. Not that the many were counting the days, mind you. Richard Linklater’s “Sunrise” is a wonderful movie that made very little noise at the box office back in 1995, which makes “Sunset” a most unusual entity in American cinema: A sequel motivated by aestheticism rather than avarice. Linklater (“School of Rock,” “Dazed and Confused”) directed and co-wrote the script with its stars, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, both returning a little older, wiser and sexier.
When last they met, Jesse and Celine shared one magical night in Vienna that ended with an unkept promise to reunite at a train station six months later. Nearly a decade has passed before these soulmates finally do meet again, this time at a famous Paris bookstore where Jesse is promoting a novel he wrote about one magical night with a beautiful French girl. Jesse’s got just over an hour before he must leave to catch a plane, and he and Celine spend that time rediscovering each other through an intense conversation as the story unfolds in real time. The dialogue is crisp and insightful, and both actors inhabit the roles effortlessly — they know these characters so well it’s easy to imagine that they are these characters. The handsome streets of the Left Bank serve as the canvas upon which Hawke and Delpy paint an arresting portrait of two people who suddenly find themselves face to face with lives that might have been, save for one fateful missed rendezvous. (Rated R for language and sexual references. Running time: 80 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 2, 2004. Read the original PDF.