"Isn't everything autobiography? We all see the world through our own tiny keyhole." Holding forth in Paris' Shakespeare & Co. about his new novel, "This Time," Jesse (Ethan Hawke) is doing his best to avoid naming which parts are true and which are made up. Reporters attending this last stop on his book tour persist, however, earnestly seeking to delineate fact from fiction. Jesse holds out though, with one more diversionary maneuver: he starts describing his theory of time, in which seemingly distinct moments occur simultaneously.
At that moment, he spots her. Celine (Julie Delpy) stands apart from his rapt audience, smiling gloriously, if shyly. In this instant, she looks nearly the same as when he last saw her, in "Before Sunrise," the movie where director Richard Linklater and co-writers Hawke and Delpy originally conjured the characters. On their first meeting some nine years ago, Celine and Jesse spent a night walking around Vienna and falling in mostly unspoken love. They promised to meet again six months later, they parted tearfully, and the film ended.
Their sequel is a surprise: even those viewers who wanted to know "what happened" have since moved on, not expecting to know. Now, the consequences of that meeting are revealed, in ways that, quite miraculously, expand on the themes of "Before Sunrise" -- truth, desire, apprehension. Here again, they appear uncertain about their night in Vienna, not least the seeming fate that brought them together. The first film concluded without resolution, in part because the characters were unresolved -- poetic and young, ambitious and hopeful (as the "sunrise" of the title evokes). Their decision not to exchange numbers or any other contact information emerged from their belief that if they were meant to be together, each would make the trip that would ensure their union.
Now, in "Before Sunset," Celine and Jesse spend a day in Paris, again falling in love, perhaps with their former selves, as their 1995 encounter is ever present in what they don't say. As in the first film, Linklater's camera (wielded by Lee Daniels) follows the characters as they wander from place to place and subject to subject, discussing literature, philosophy, their own expectations and their weirdly elemental, unexpected romance.
They did meet again, somewhat whimsically, in Linklater's "Waking Life," where their animated selves woke in an Austin, Texas bedroom and continued the sort of fanciful conversation they shared in Vienna. This time, their expectations have been tempered, their desires reframed by nearly a decade's worth of experiences that have taken them in different directions, even as they came back together.
Again, Celine and Jesse face limits, in the form of his 7:30pm flight from De Gaulle (he's on his way back to a wife and four-year-old son in New York), as well as their own complicated feelings for one another. They are no longer fresh-faced and expectant, but, at least initially, wary and self-protective. This ends quickly, as they begin admitting, perhaps trying out, all sorts of disclosures and speculations. Both are leaner, weathered, sadder-seeming. And yet they retain a sense of wonder, especially as they see one another.
On the one hand, each has fantasized the other, projecting ideals and frustrations onto one another. On the other hand, each has experienced a life apart from the other (she's an environmental activist, currently involved with a world-traveling, often absent photographer), and so their frozen-in-time images of one another aren't entirely accurate. Even when they did think they knew one another, they now come to realize, they couldn't have known much of anything.
And yet, their desire to know, to define and understand the brief time they shared, has shaped the rest of their lives. With the "floaty" perfection of the first film lingering in viewers' minds, the sequel offers an intriguing investigation of the ways that reminiscence reshapes both past and present. (As Celine notes, "Memory's a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past.")
Jesse's novel similarly reworks their meeting in Vienna, in ways that Celine calls "flattering and disturbing at the same time." It's strange, she says, to be "part of someone else's memory," especially as that memory is reshaped in fiction (you never know what he has written, only that his idea to have the couple reunite in a coda was turned down by his editor).
In real life, such as it is, Celine didn't make the appointment in Vienna, and Jesse has since harbored disappointment and resentment, as well as a need to know what happened. At times, their reevaluations are comic, as when Celine can't seem to recall whether they had sex in Vienna (Jesse is, understandably, distressed by her memory lapse). And sometimes they are poignant, as when Jesse confesses that when he was in a taxi en route to his own wedding in NYC, he imagined he saw Celine on a corner (she reveals that she attended NYU, which, in fact, Delpy did, though it's hard to say where that fact fits in the film's incessant knotting of verity and invention).
Their initial dynamic -- shaped by Celine's curiosity and optimism and Jesse's visible agitation and resentment -- changes as they talk. If he never forgot her (or let go of the possibility of their reunion), she immersed herself in her work, which she describes as a "process of helping others be in the moment." It is also a job, of course, and her time in a Mexican or Indian village isn't always so transcendent. Relieved to hear that Jesse is not "one of those Freedom Fries type of Americans," she's also annoyed at his self-interested apathy: "Let me break the news to you," she scolds, "The world is a mess right now." And so is she, in her way. When she eventually confesses the effects of their first meeting, she surprises even herself with her candor and upset.
As they walk through the Latin Quarter or along the Seine, the camera tends to move with Celine and Jesse, following behind, hovering ahead of them, anticipating and awaiting their course. Occasionally cutting between them in a standard conversational rhythm, the camera more often observes and allows their conversation to shape the visual scheme: they remain framed but rarely stay still. Taking place in more or less "real time" (the 80-some minutes they spend together is the film's running time), "Before Sunset" itself seems a process. Lyrical and unusual, contemplative as it seems to meander, it permits discovery, yours as much as Celine or Jesse's.
Infused with ambiguity, "Before Sunset" is that rare sequel, delicately complicating the original, while also creating its own elegant, careful anticipation. The film rates as a 7 out of 10.
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