I finally saw Before Sunset, which I found quite enjoyable. I liked the premise of Before Sunrise, and it managed to hold my attention, even if some of the dialgoue seemed forced. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have certainly matured since 1995, becoming more comfortable as actors and with each other, which makes the film even more enjoyable. The explanation of their failure to meet is believable, as are the characters they’ve become. There is an interesting moment where the Delpy character pretends not to remember a sexual incident from their first encounter, which in turn made me question my memory. I didn’t remember it either, and, on further reflection, I believe the incident was implied, not shown.
The dialogue seems less forced, and is more explicitly political than vaguely philosophical as in the first, but that’s there too. She works for an environmental group, and there is a lot of talk about American imperialism, waste, consumerism, war and environmental issues. The philosophical is tempered by more practical, political concerns, especially on her part.
While the movie is, on the whole, satisfying, I found myself drifting from time to time. Linklater does a good job of varying the mise-en-scene with long tracking shots through Paris and various decors, like a cafe, or a boat on the Seine, but it is difficult to listen to people talk for 80 minutes. This is where I think Linklater succeeds better in Waking Life, a film where there is much more talking, in different venues and registers, spanning philopsophy, science, politics and religion, but where the use of rotoscoping holds the viewer’s attention and actually contributes to the meaning of some of the vignettes.
But Before Sunset is not meant to be challenging, at least not in that way. The challenge of this film is following and developing characters over years in a series of more or less uneventful films. In the DVD extras, Linklater says he would like to make several films with these two characters, creating a “document” of a relationship over decades. He must have been thinking about this when he put the two actors together in bed in Waking Life, blurring the line between reality and dream by having characters cross the boundaries between films and genres. Perhaps it is this as much as anything that I find compelling about Linklater: the willingness to experiment with character and situation, not only within a movie but over an extended period of time. If he continues with these characters, I would be happy to read the document.
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