Before Sunset is a story about getting old that masquerades in the guise of a desperate romance. Sure, it is about the reunion of the twenty-somethings that wooed us and each other a decade ago in Before Sunrise, but these beloved characters are now old and tired and perfectly willing to admit it to each other. The film begins with Jesse at a book signing in Paris, talking about the book he wrote about his experience meeting Celine and never seeing her again (the storyline of this film’s prequel, Before Sunrise). When one of the reporters at the signing asks him whether or not the book is autobiographical (which we know it is), he only responds with a shrug. Little does he know that Celine is right around the corner listening to him pawn off their unforgettable romance as good fiction. “Everyone wants to believe in love right?” he says, “It sells!”


In Before Sunrise, they promised that they would meet each other six months later in Vienna. Unfortunately, it never happened. Now years later they pick up effortlessly where they left off, their conversation renewed when Celine finds out that Jesse really did go to Vienna and left after waiting for her to show up. Before Sunrise was one of those rare films, like My Dinner With Andre or My Night at Maude’s, that mainly exist as a backdrop for a really good conversation. This sequel is no different even though their conversation this time is marked by a decade of living in the real world. Relationships, kids, and career changes have watered down their wanderlust with the dullness of middle age. Jesse and Celine, once icons of carefree dialogical passion now express how trapped and disenfranchised they feel with life.


Shot literally in real time, the film takes place for however long it takes them to get from the bookstore to her apartment. Filmed in long, continuous takes through parks, at benches, or in a boat down the Seine, Linklater's camera moves like a reverse Spike Lee dolly shot. There is a bold approximation of realism solicited from these long shots, in which we are permitted to inspect every mannerism, little bits of body language, and unvocalized responses. But is is a Rohmer sort of realism, one that he claimed is "not an end in itself, but a means." In abandoning technique for the realism of silent cinema, his films are caught up in the magic of cinema, which is connected to the poetry of bodies moving through space, interacting, becoming storied. Likewise, Linklater's camera is tuned to the deep focus of this walk through Paris, granting a spontaneity to what is obviously a carefully staged set of scenes.


Jesse is married, Celine is confused, and the audience knows that the end of the film looms closer every minute, bearing down on us with all the apprehension and regret implicit to the storyline. This agony further unfolds when Jesse and Celine discover how close they came to reuniting years ago, and how much they still think about the one night they spent together. And in sharing their recent history something very sad happens. We discover two people who are so overwhelmingly defined by an event in the past (the events of Before Sunrise) that their present is intolerable. They are caught in storylines that they haven’t written and that they are powerless to control. Even though years ago they had a real shot at love, they have become who everyone is at middle age, dissatisfied and exhausted. Both films that chronicle the story of Jesse and Celine have been approached by critics as very personal and engaging experiences. The films address us as individuals with memories of love and innocence and a present of disillusionment and boredom. Before Sunset is completely engaging on this level, even more so considering that Jesse is now married. This adds a moral dimension to the film that causes each viewer to work through this moral dilemma with Jesse, deciding with him what it is that now defines us. Is it our daydreams or our commitments?


In the last shot of Jesse, we can clearly see him playing with his wedding ring, spinning it on his finger in a way that suggests the weighing of his options. Celine dances before him like something out of a dream, or at least like something out of the dreams that have sustained him over the last few difficult years. The “fade to black” is a technique in film that we are all familiar with. It is usually used to add drama to a scene that needs a little visual kick, imposing a gravity and resolution to whatever has happened. Sometimes the “fade to black” sears the final details into the viewer’s mind, forming a sort of visual punctuation. Before Sunset ends with a brilliant “fade to black” that really isn't either of these things It closes off the real time experience of the story almost with a wink, the vanishing composition of the final frame a point at which Linklater makes the viewer, who has attended this story over the course of two films, complicit with the range of possible conclusions here. We aren't permitted to finish it ourselves, unguided, but neither are we offered any drama or closure. Celine dances off to the side of the screen, as if she is no longer a spectacle for us. The audience, who has been part of this very personal conversation and relationship that started years ago, isn’t invited into the private ambiguity of how their story ends...and then the credits roll.