Before Sunset is a 2004 American romantic drama film, the sequel to Before Sunrise and
the predecessor to Before Midnight. Like its predecessor, the film was directed by Richard
Linklater. However, this time Linklater shares screenplay credit with both actors from the
film, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Linklater also shares story credit with the original
Before Sunrise screenwriter Kim Krizan. The film picks up the story in Before Sunrise
where a young American man and a young French woman meet on a train and spend one night
in Vienna. Nine years later in Before Sunset, their paths intersect again. It plays out
in real time as they spend one afternoon together in Paris.
Before Sunset received broad acclaim, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best
Adapted Screenplay.
Plot Nine years have passed since the events of
Before Sunrise, when Jesse and Céline had met in Vienna. Since then, Jesse has written
a novel, This Time, inspired by his time with Céline, and the book has become an American
bestseller. To help sales in Europe, Jesse does a book tour. The last stop of the tour
is Paris, and Jesse is doing a reading at the bookstore Shakespeare and Company. As
Jesse talks with his audience, flashbacks are shown of him and Céline in Vienna; the
memories of their night together have clearly remained with him despite nine years having
elapsed. Three journalists are present at the bookstore, interviewing Jesse: a romantic
who is convinced the book's main characters meet again, a cynic who is convinced that
they do not, and a third one who, despite wanting them to meet again, remains doubtful
they actually do. As he speaks with his audience his eyes wander to the side, and he can hardly
believe it: Céline is smiling at him. Once the presentation is over, the bookstore
manager reminds him he has a plane to catch and must leave for the airport in a little
more than an hour, and so just like in Before Sunrise, Céline and Jesse's reunion is constrained
by time. As in the earlier movie, the characters are forced to make the best of the little
time they have together, making it easier for their conversations to become ever more
personal, beginning with the usual thirty-something's themes of work and politics and then, with
ever increasing passion, approaching their love for each other, just as their time together
is running out. Early in their conversation, they broach the
subject of why they did not meet as promised six months after their first encounter. It
turns out that Jesse had returned to Vienna, as promised, but Céline did not, because
her grandmother had suddenly died before the scheduled date of the meeting. Because Jesse
and Céline had never exchanged addresses, there was no way for them to contact each
other, which resulted in their missed connection. As they talk, each reveals what has happened
in their lives since first meeting. Both are now in their early thirties. Jesse, now a
writer, is married and has a son. Céline has become an advocate for the environment,
lived in America for a time, and has a boyfriend, a photojournalist. It becomes clear in the
course of their talk that both are dissatisfied to varying degrees with their lives. Jesse
reveals that he only stays with his wife out of love for his son. Céline says that she
does not see her boyfriend very much because he is so often on assignment.
Their conversation as they traverse Paris takes place in various venues, including a
café, a garden, a bateau mouche, and Jesse's hired car for his stay in Paris. Their old
feelings for each other are slowly rekindled, even with tension and regret over the missed
meeting earlier, as they realize that nothing else in their lives has matched their one
prior night together in Vienna. Jesse eventually admits that he wrote the book in the distant
hope of meeting Céline again one day. She replies that the book brought back painful
memories for her. At one point, in the hired car, during a tense moment when Jesse is confessing
his loveless, near sexless marriage, Céline reaches her hand out to touch Jesse but pulls
back just as he turns to her. In the concluding scene, Céline and Jesse
arrive at her apartment. Jesse had learned that Céline plays the guitar and persuades
her to play a waltz song for him. The waltz is revealed through the lyrics to be about
their brief encounter. Jesse then plays a Nina Simone CD on the stereo
system. Céline dances by herself to the song "Just in Time" as Jesse watches her. As Céline
imitates Simone, she playfully imitates Simone's voice and says to Jesse, "Baby ... you are
gonna miss that plane." As the camera slowly pans in, Jesse smiles while nervously fidgeting
with his wedding ring and responds, "I know", as the film ends.
Cast Ethan Hawke as Jesse
Julie Delpy as Céline Vernon Dobtcheff as Bookstore manager
Louise Lemoine Torres as Journalist #1 Rodolphe Pauly as Journalist #2
Mariane Plasteig as Waitress Diabolo as Philippe
Denis Evrard as Boat attendant Albert Delpy as Man at grill
Marie Pillet as Woman in courtyard Production
After Before Sunrise, Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy had spent time considering the possibility
of a sequel. Linklater described an early version as being more like a traditional romantic
comedy, filmed in four locations and with a much larger budget, but when they failed
to secure funding, the ideas for the movie were scaled back. In a 2010 interview Hawke
revealed that the three of them had worked on several potential scripts over the years
following the first film, including one for a story that took place two years after Before
Sunrise, but as time went on and the lack of funding meant that the film was not made
immediately, parts of the earlier scripts were included in the final draft of Before
Sunset instead. Linklater said that the process of creating the final version of the film
was that "we sat in a room and worked together in about a two- or three-day period, worked
out a very detailed outline of the whole film in this sort of real-time environment. And
then, over the next year or so, we just started e-mailing each other and faxing. I was sort
of a conduit – they would send me monologues and dialogues and scenes and ideas, and I
was editing, compiling and writing. And that's how we came up with a script." Hawke said
about the reason for making the film, "It's not like anybody was begging us to make a
second film. We obviously did it because we wanted to."
The movie was filmed entirely on location in Paris. It opens inside the Shakespeare
and Company bookstore on the Left Bank, and after following Jesse and Céline walking
along the streets outside the bookstore and in the Marais district of the 4th arrondissement,
the other locations are the Le Pure Café in the 11th arrondissement, the Promenade
Plantée park in the 12th arrondissement, on board a bateau mouche from Quai de la Tournelle
to Quai Henri IV, the interior of a taxi, and finally "Céline's apartment," described
in the film as located at 18 passage des Petites-Ecuries but actually filmed in Cour de l'Étoile d'Or
off rue du Faubourg St-Antoine. The movie was filmed in just 15 days, on a
budget of about US$2 million. The film is noted for its use of the Steadicam for tracking
shots and its use of long takes, with the longest of the Steadicam takes at about 11
minutes. The summer was one of the hottest on record, and the cast and crew suffered
along with the citizens of Paris as temperatures exceeded 100 degrees F for most of the production.
Noteworthy too is that the film takes place essentially in real time, i.e. the time elapsed
in the story is also the run time of the film. In the fast changing temperate Paris climate,
this created challenges for the cinematographer Lee Daniel to match the color and intensity
of the skies and ambient light from scene to scene. Adding to the difficulty, the scenes
were mostly shot in sequence as the screenplay was still being developed as the film was
shot. Producer Anne Walker-McBay worked with less time and less money than she had on Before
Sunrise, and struggled to bring the film in on time and on budget, which she was ultimately
able to do. The sequel was released nine years after Before Sunrise, the same amount of time
that has lapsed in the plot since the events of the first film.
The film appeared in the wake of Hawke's divorce from Uma Thurman, and some commentators drew
parallels between Hawke's own life and the character of Jesse in the film. Additional
comment has noted that both Hawke and Delpy incorporated elements of their own lives into
the screenplay, such as the fact that Delpy lived for several years in New York City.
Delpy also wrote two songs featured in the film. A third was included in the closing
credits and movie soundtrack. Release
Before Sunset premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2004, and received
a limited release in the United States on July 2, 2004.
Box office In its opening weekend, the film grossed $219,425
in 20 theaters in the United States, averaging $10,971 per theater. During its entire theatrical
run, the film grossed $5.8 million in the United States and nearly $16 million worldwide.
Critical reception Before Sunset received a highly positive reception
from the critics. It held a 95% favorable rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 159 reviews,
and was assigned a weighted average score of 90/100 by Metacritic based on 39 reviews
from mainstream publications, indicating "universal acclaim". The film appeared on 28 critics'
top 10 lists of the best films of 2004, and took the 27th spot on Metacritic's list of
The Best-Reviewed Movies of the Decade. In the United Kingdom, the film was ranked the
110th greatest movie of all time by a 2008 Empire poll. In 2010, the critics at The Guardian
placed Before Sunrise/Before Sunset at number 3 in their list of the best romantic films
of all time, and called the ending of Before Sunset "one of the most tantalising and ingenious
endings in all cinema." In comparing this film with the original,
film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Before Sunrise was a remarkable celebration of the fascination
of good dialogue. But Before Sunset is better, perhaps because the characters are older and
wiser, perhaps because they have more to lose, and perhaps because Hawke and Delpy wrote
the dialogue themselves." In her review for the Los Angeles Times, Manohla Dargis lauded
the film as a "deeper, truer work of art than the first," and complimented director Linklater
for making a film that "keeps faith with American cinema at its finest."
Reviewing the acting, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone observed, "Hawke and Delpy find nuance,
art and eroticism in words, spoken and unspoken. The actors shine." Philip French of The Observer
wrote, "Both Hawke and Delpy are excellent and their performances have real depth. This
time, too, they're doing more than appearing as fictional creations in a Richard Linklater
film. They now share the writing credit with him and are clearly putting much of their
experiences of the past decade into characters they have possessed and been possessed by."
On the merits of the script, A. O. Scott of The New York Times noted, it was "sometimes
maddening," but "also enthralling, precisely because of its casual disregard for the usual
imperatives of screenwriting." He further elaborated, "Can't they just say what they
mean? Can you? Language, after all, is not just about points and meanings. It is a medium
of communication, yes, but also of avoidance, misdirection, self-protection and plain confusion,
all of which are among the themes of this movie, which captures a deep truth seldom
acknowledged on screen or in books." Top 10 lists
As noted by Metacritic, the film appeared on the following critics' top 10 lists of
2004. Awards and nominations
Awards 2004 Boston Society of Film Critics Award
– Best Film Nominations
2004 77th Academy Awards – Best Writing for Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Julie
Delpy, and Kim Krizan. 2004 Independent Spirit Award – Best Screenplay
for Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy
2005 Writers Guild of America Award – Best Adapted Screenplay for Richard Linklater,
Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, and Kim Krizan. 2004 Berlin International Film Festival – Golden
Bear 2004 Gotham Awards – Best Film
Sequel Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy all suggested
the possibility of a sequel to Before Sunset, with Hawke saying that it would be nice to
develop further the course of Jesse and Céline's relationship and stating that "I'll be shocked
if we never make another one". In a video interview in November 2011, Hawke said that
he, Delpy and Linklater "have been talking a lot in the last six months... all three
of us have been having similar feelings that we're kind of ready to revisit those characters...
there's nine years between the first two movies... if we made the film next summer, it would
be nine years again, so we started thinking that would be a good thing to do. So we're
going to try and write it this year." In June 2012, Hawke confirmed that the sequel to Before
Sunset would be filmed in summer 2012. In September 2012, it was announced the sequel,
entitled Before Midnight, had completed filming and would premiere at the Sundance Film Festival
in January 2013. The film was released in May to widespread acclaim, and received an
Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
References
External links Before Sunset at the Internet Movie Database
Before Sunset at Box Office Mojo Before Sunset at Rotten Tomatoes
Before Sunset at Metacritic Before Sunset filming locations at Movieloci.com
An interview with Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke & Julie Delpy by Los Angeles Times