Paris: The Before Trilogy 2: 'Before Sunset'

In a post last week, I spoke about Before Sunrise, the first of three movies in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy, that has now been collected and remastered by Criterion. Be sure to read the post linked in the previous sentence before continuing on. I'll try and avoid spoiler-ish language.

The second installment in this trilogy, Before Sunset - Is it just a trilogy? We'll get to that in the next post about the Before series - is a continuation of the story of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), two young lovers who met on a train heading to Vienna nine years before the events in this story.

Jesse - the brash, romantic dreamer - has become an author since the events in the first film. He lives in NYC with a wife and young child and is on a European book tour for his novel, a fictionalized version of his date with Celine.

Speaking of, she still lives and works in Paris and the Paris date of Jesse's book tour is where their reunion occurs. They only have an hour and half our so left before Jesse has to catch his plane back to the U.S. and to his family. The couple once again wander through a beautiful European city, discussing their lives, their loves, and what they've been up to for nine long years.

Hawke and Delpy co-wrote the film with director Linklater, and were Oscar-nominated for their work. You can feel the lived-in vibe of the conversations they have as thirtysomethings reconnecting.

Where the first movie had a dewy twentysomething romantic longing vibe, knowing that the two lovers are fighting a clock's time running out, Sunset has a different twist. There is a time-is-running-out element of a plane to catch, but also the reward of finding each other again after nearly a decade apart.

Hawke and Delpy have become better actors in the intervening years, and maybe a tad more cynical, but it all propels the film to a smart conclusion: another possibility to move forward, another choice that changes their direction in life.

The short film, only 80 minutes, occurs almost in real time. There's a real rush to inform, a rush to get everything in to words that these two reconnected romantics have been holding out on.

Knowing this is the middle section of a trilogy and that another decade will have to take place before the next  installment, is both exciting and frustrating. Where will two lovebirds move on to now that their fairytale has come full circle and they've been reunited?