BEFORE SUNSET (2004) - ENGLISH

Now if Before Sunrise was great, this is much better too.

Jesse and Celine have met last 9 years ago, Jesse comes up with a book and while describing it in a bookstall in Paris, he meets Celine again. Now, where will this brief encounter lead to, where ever it would end p, the path is for sure gonna be beautiful and that's how it is. 

With a beautiful romantic work already done, the director ups the ante this time and how? By making it  more time bound and more mature. Jesse and Celine have grown up now, what they thought as everything beautiful is not so as it turns out. They feel imprisoned in their own lives, they have learnt to embrace the shortcomings of what we call is an imperfect world, they speak more fluidly and are more comfortable with each other s they already had a meeting earlier. 

Richard Linklater seems to be a master in telling what he would like to tell and in his own inimitable style. He has got aides in Ethan Hawke as Jesse and Julie Delpy as Celine who have added so much to dialog in what is primarily a conversational movie. Can you believe that the whole movie is shot the way the characters speak out, that is as they speak for an hour long, the movie is precisely that much duration only. Now, so many interesting things come up in this conversation.

Going with 5/5 this time too and I love this so much to have a repeat watch.

Céline: I was thinking...for me it's better I don't romanticize things as much anymore. I was suffering so much all the time. I still have lots of dreams, but they're not in regard to my love life. (Cut to interior of the car.) It doesn't make me sad, it's just the way it is.

Jesse: Is that why you're in a relationship with somebody who's never around?

Céline: Yes, obviously, I can't deal with the day to day life of a relationship. Yeah, we have, you know, this exciting time together and then he leaves, and I miss him, but at least I'm not dying inside. When someone is always around me, I'm like suffocating!

Jesse: No, wait, you just said that you need to love and be loved...

Céline: Yeah, but when I do it quickly makes me nauseous! It's a disaster... I mean I'm really happy only when I'm on my own. Even being alone...it's better than...sitting next to a lover and feeling lonely. It's not so easy for me to be all romantic. You start off that way and after you've been screwed over a few times...you...you…you forget about all your delusional ideas and you just take what comes into your life. That's not even true I haven't been...screwed over, I've just had too many blah relationships. They weren't mean, they cared for me, but... there were no real...connection or excitement. At least not from my side.

Jesse: God, I'm sorry, is it...is it really that bad? It's not, right?

Céline: (Shaking her head with eyes nearly watering.) You know...it's not even that. I was...I was fine, until I read your fucking book! It stirred shit up, you know? It reminded me how genuinely romantic I was, how I had so much hope in things, and now it's like...I don't believe in anything that relates to love. I don't feel things for people anymore. In a way...I put all my romanticism into that one night, and I was never able to feel all this again. Like...somehow this night took things away from me and...I expressed them to you, and you took them with you! It made me feel cold, like if love wasn't for me!