Short Take: Before Sunset

Before Sunset, director Richard Linklater’s 2004 follow-up to his 1995 Before Sunrise, is a lovely, daringly made film. The story has the first film’s lead characters (Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke) meeting in Paris nine years later. Now in their 30s, the two are as erudite and talkative as ever, and they once more fall in love. The difference is that this time, their feelings have none of the purity and naïvete of youth. Their rapport is now colored by the disappointments and anxieties that come with the experiences of being an adult. The script, by Linklater, Kim Krizan, Hawke, and Delpy, is remarkably fluid in its handling of the shifts from happiness to doubt and back again. In keeping with the first firm, it’s also enjoyably wry in its treatment of the characters’ ostensibly pithy perspectives on life and love. The film seems to recognize this talk is simply how these two highly verbal characters make contact. Their pretentiousness is kept light and funny, and the film never makes the mistake of treating it as actual wisdom. Linklater’s directing, along with Delpy and Hawke’s performances, make for a breathtaking high-wire act. The film is a series of long-take tracking shots as the characters talk their way across Paris. Every beat, nuance, and shift in tone has to be played perfectly or the picture would fall apart. The director and the two stars pull it off, and it’s thrilling to see. The attractive open-air cinematography is by Lee Daniel.