Yesterday I watched Richard Linklater’s 2004 film Before Sunset, a sequel to his 1995 film Before Sunrise. Before Sunrise was about two people in their early twenties, an American (played by Ethan Hawke) and a European (played by Julie Delpy), who meet in Europe and wind up spending an evening and night together before going their separate ways. In the sequel, Ethan Hawke’s character has written a novel based on the experience and is touring Paris, and he and Julie Delpy’s character meet for the first time since their original European encounter nine years earlier.
One great thing about the movie is that it’s in real time – the movie is 80 minutes long, and the action occurs over the course of those 80 minutes. “Action” isn’t really the right word, because it’s mainly a conversation as the two characters travel through Paris and catch up on their lives over the past nine years. That’s the other great thing about the movie – the same amount of time has passed in the real world as has passed between the two movies, so if you saw the first movie, you really feel as if you’re catching up with a couple of people you only vaguely remember.
A theme of the movie is how the circumstances of our lives rarely match our expectations. Another theme is how much different we are in our early 30s from who we were in our early 20s – and how some things stay the same. I’m 31, so the movie was poignant for me.
I hope they make another sequel in 10 years, and 10 years after that, and so on. I’d love to follow these two characters over the course of their lives.
