David Bowie and the Wall Street Journal agree, so it must be true: Europeans are scared of Americans. The Thin White Recently Angioplastied Duke is probably right — we are pretty scary, in a goofy, bumbling sort of way — but those fears cut both ways.
Movies being such a reliable means of measuring cross-cultural rifts, it should come as no surprise that films imported from all those scary countries across the pond are less popular over here than ever before. That's a bit distressing for those of us who still love great cinema regardless of where it comes from, of course, but now it's beginning to look like we can have our cake and eat it too.
The ghosts of classic European art cinema are haunting many of Hollywood's best films these days, making it possible for homegrown cinephiles to experience a little Old World sophistication at the megaplexes without having to bother with pesky subtitles or funny accents. Take the upcoming Jeff Bridges-Kim Bassinger project The Door in the Floor, for instance (originally due out this week but postponed until later in the summer). Although the movie's based on a John Irving novel and is full of local New England color, it often seems as if it's channeling that most enigmatic of Italian auteurs, Michelangelo Antonioni, and a specific type of European cinema as symbol-laden and glacial as it is ultimately unknowable.
Another important but very different kind of Euro-filmmaking infuses Before Sunset, director Richard Linklater's wonderful sequel to his 1995 Before Sunrise. It's romantic but unsentimental, unabashedly chatty and resolutely minimalist, and the spirit of Eric Rohmer (who just turned 84 and is still very much alive) wafts through Linklater's movie. And much like so many of Rohmer's films, the nearly plotless and actionless Before Sunset practically dares us to peg it as a wisp of a film — "wisp" being a scary word to many (speaking of scary things), but one that contemporary audiences should try getting comfortable with.
The small scale of Before Sunset only adds to the movie's charm — it's as fragile and fleeting as life itself — and the movie's "wispiness" should in no way be taken as a lack of substance. Like the film that proceeded it nine years ago, Before Sunset is basically just two people talking to each other, presented in something very close to real time. But what's said and what happens in the course of that 80-minute conversation should be of interest to almost anyone who is remotely curious about human beings and how they relate to each other, especially in matters of the heart.
Before Sunrise was a film about a boy and a girl meeting and making a connection one night in a beautiful, faraway city. Celene (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) were strangers on a train who came together for a one-night stand of conversation, confessions and romance, then parted ways with a vow to meet again six months hence. Before Sunset catches up with those same two people, nine years later, as they meet, more or less by chance, in a Paris bookstore.
It turns out that the pair didn't reunite as planned nine years earlier (actually, one showed up and one didn't), and since they hadn't exchanged phone numbers (being young and impulsive), Jesse and Celene lost touch. Neither apparently ever forgot that night, though, and Jesse even wrote a book about it, a "modest bestseller" that he's in Paris promoting when the person with whom he shared that long-ago evening walks into the room.
What ensues is a veritable talkfest between two hyper-articulate individuals who have a lot to say to one another, as well as a walking tour of Paris in the fall (and it doesn't get much better than that). When we last saw Jesse and Celene they were both beautiful, intensely curious creatures, eager to experience everything that life had in store for them, and filled with that delightfully annoying sense of near-invincibility that most 23-year-olds seem to have. Now, in their early 30s, both have been a little beaten down by life and each is marked by the knowledge that decisions matter, often more than we want them to, and that the clock is ticking.
Time doesn't just pass in this film, it grandstands; it's the acknowledged third star (right along with Delpy and Hawke) in a film that tells us right up front that all time is a circle without end. That may sound just a wee bit self-conscious or even pretentious, but Linklater isn't just airing some of those same philosophical obsessions he's previously tinkered with in Slacker and Waking Life. What the director is getting at here is something more practical, just letting us know that even though the past may be past, everyone from the incurable romantic to the hard-bitten cynic gets another chance eventually. At least in his movie.
The verbal dance between the characters is beautifully played by Hawke and Delpy (who helped write their own dialogue), beginning awkward and tentative and gradually becoming more natural and at ease as the characters begin to square their memories of one another with the reality of who they are now. For all the talk, there's always something unspoken bubbling away in the space between these two ex-lovers, a not altogether unpleasant tension generated from not quite knowing where nostalgia for what was or what might have been ends and genuine affection begins.
There's some resentment and even anger here too, as Before Sunset turns out to be a somewhat less sunny and more complex film than Before Sunrise. We're constantly aware of time passing and slipping away, from the real-time effect created from unedited, long takes where the camera tracks the pair through the neighborhoods and back streets of Paris. We see time and experience written on their faces, too, with Hawke's pretty boy features now transformed into a harder, bonier, less forgiving version. Delpy still glows, but she's lost a bit of baby fat too — as has the film, which is even more stripped down than the 1995 model.
In the end, this wisp of a film becomes something thrilling, even without a single special effect, explosion or chase scene. The movie manages to thrill us by throwing into our faces most of our expectations about what we think a film should be, and by so gently but completely engaging our minds, our senses and, ultimately, our emotions.
As for Jesse and Celene getting back together, all I'll say is that Linklater lets the audience have a vote in the matter, and the outcome depends largely upon whether you're an optimist or a pessimist. In any event, another sequel is definitely in order, so what do you say, Richard? Is there a Sunrise, Sunset or The Sun Also Rises in the cards, maybe for 2013? Call it whatever you want, but don't leave us hanging.
Contact Film Critic Lance Goldenberg at lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2004.