Before Sunset

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So I finally get to have most of my weekend off for the first time in like months! Saturday night + broke college student = MOVIE TIME! Yeah…not too fast. I’m watching a sequel to a romance movie that apparently was the ‘best’ ever. Ok, it wasn’t too bad but still not my cup of tea. After an exhausting opening shift and some hanging out with buddies after work, I lay down on my couch, open my laptop, set it on the table next to it and pull up the “Before Sunset” movie.

*Now to be honest, I don’t know if it was just I being extremely tired but I ended up knocking the heck out after the first twenty minutes or so. Not that the movie was bad or anything; it was probably those long takes that feel like forever that made me fall asleep. Makes me wonder what new attention disorders they are going to come up with in the future. My generation can’t even have a normal conversation without looking at their phones and checking how many likes they got on their picture of a sandwich that looks semi-edible with the hashtag and the word ‘gourmet’ next to it. (I think I’m the only one in my generation that still associates the ‘#’ symbol as pound, not hashtag. Please tell me I’m not the only one.) *

OH YEAH, “Before Sunset”.

So we find out nine years have passed since Jessie (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) had that awesome night together strolling in the beautiful, historic city of Vienna. We first learn that Jessie has become somewhat of a famous writer after writing a book about the day he met Celine. Is that a bit creepy or romantic? That a guy has the “best night of his life” with some chick, writes a bestseller book about it, and then manages to have a book signing in the city where this woman is supposed to live in. Hmm… I’d say hopeless romantic is a better fit for Jessie. Hey I can’t hate, I would have probably done the same even though that chance of seeing that person would be so slim. (Maybe not in this age of social media craziness but for 2004, yes) Since this is a romantic movie trilogy, OF COURSE the woman of his wet dreams shows up by surprise at his book signing. What a lucky son of a gun, right? Well we can call him lucky until we find out he’s married with a son back in the United States. Bummer right? I promise it gets more interesting as the movie goes in further.

What I enjoyed in this movie just like the one before it was the dialogue. This time Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy were the ones writing the script and you can see that they genuinely put their personality and personal life into the script. For example, Ethan Hawke moving to New York from Texas or Julie Delpy moving to New York to study at New York University. In the movie, Jessie and Celine discuss how their lives have unfolded throughout the past nine years. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention they actually never met up in Vienna those six months after meeting. Which is what I predicted in the first place. How boring and predictable would the sequel have been if it took place six months after that night they met? Anyways, just like the last movie, this movie had outstanding dialogue (even though I had fallen asleep). I liked how the director just let the actors keep talking without taking any brakes as if they were really having a real life conversation. It makes the movie seem more realistic in that sense. Also, the fact that the movie was actually running on real time was pretty impressive. Most movies like to shove months, or even years into an hour and half of screen time.

Overall, the movie as a sequel is pretty good. Like I said if you like that sort of thing. One thing I want to criticize about the filming, was when they were filming around Paris you didn’t see any minorities. I think there was only one black guy in the movie. We all know Paris is a very diverse cosmopolitan city. It would have been nice to see an actual representation of the demographics of Paris judging by how real the director wanted this movie to feel. Other than that, I didn’t dislike the movie nor do I absolutely love it. Although after watching these two movies so far, I’d like to say that I’ve grown an appreciation for this genre of film. Maybe I’ll understand it better when I’ve grown older and had my heart torn in 9 million pieces in 37 different ways by 10 different women.