More Talk, But No Sex

After the screen suddenly went black, the audience in a Loews Cineplex theater in Times Square were momentarily shocked and immediately shouted an anguished cry of "Oh no!" For about 80 minutes or so, they had hoped and waited for a final resolution to the romance of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy). The murky relationship between Jesse and Celine, now on its fictional ninth year, started with a fleeting glance on board a Budapest-Vienna train one summer evening.

Then, the audience burst into loud applause, realizing that the unexpected ending was director Richard Linklater’s clever device to inform them that they will see Jesse and Celine again.

In Manhattan last July, this reviewer had watched Before Sunset three times on different dates. The first instance was to appreciate the totality of the movie, second to focus on the "spontaneous" dialogue, and third to enjoy the postcard-like scenes shot in Paris where this writer had "lived" among illegal Filipino migrants for his Ph.D. dissertation research. Before Sunset was shown side by side with movies such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and Delovely, among others, in and across the US last summer. Over at Manhattan’s venerable Film Forum, the award-winning documentary Imelda was giving its New York audience a good laugh.

On those three occasions, viewers of Before Sunset had responded uniformly at the end of each screening. Over here in Metro Manila, Filipino moviegoers hopefully will appreciate the film’s rather unusual and abrupt ending, which this piece simply refuses to divulge.

The 80-minute Before Sunset, which opened in the U.S. last July 2, is the sequel to the 101-minute Before Sunrise released in Jan. 27, 1995. A short backgrounder for those who failed to see the prequel and, at the same time to refresh the memory of those who had seen it. In Before Sunrise, young American tourist Jesse is bound for Vienna for a 14-hour stopover to catch a morning flight that will bring him home to the US, while French graduate student Celine is rushing to get back to Paris because her schooling in Sorbonne is starting in seven days. Celine succumbs to the provocations of Jesse to keep him company until it is time for him to go to the airport. Within those glorious 14 hours, the two 20-something characters fall for each other’s charms as they explore Vienna for the first time. Mention must be made that in Before Sunrise, time is almost immaterial to the young characters as they amble about Vienna until dawn shows its face, forcing sadness to embrace them. With heavy hearts, they proceed to the Vienna train station. Something strikes Jesse as the two prepare to bid their final goodbye. Celine agrees to his proposal for a rendezvous at the same spot six months later.

The establishing shots of Before Sunset show the now-Parisian environmentalist Celine appearing in a book-reading cum press conference by the now novelist Jesse at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. Jesse is in Paris for the last leg of his European tour to promote his latest novel that talks about their Viennese chance meeting. A visibly- jarred Jesse did not know how to react initially to the apparition of Celine. Freed from the press people, Jesse accepts an invitation from Celine to have a cup of coffee in a café. As the two leave the bookstore, someone sternly reminds Jesse that he has to catch a 7:30 p.m. flight. From here, the two characters almost completely monopolize the screen and their stunning "talkathon" commences from where they left off in Vienna. Anyone who has fallen in love will surely identify with the main characters’ conversation.

This reviewer felt like he was an eavesdropper and at the same time a voyeur as Jesse and Celine delicately engage in a verbal foreplay that gradually heightens into an intense cerebral intercourse. This time around, they are not talking about sweet-nothings, but about the joys and frustrations of an adult. It is poignant to listen and watch the two evade skillfully the question whether they still "love" each other or what will happen before 7:30 p.m.

The enchanting dialogue is interrupted only by flashbacks of their first encounter. The flashbacks are good cinematic devices to vividly show and compare how the two characters have now lost their youth and gained a certain degree of maturity as they confront burdens visiting people in their early 30s: self-doubts, doubts as to whether they married the right persons or engaged with the right persons; fears of becoming parents. In short, they are living messy lives, like most ordinary viewer does.

The extra-ordinary appeal of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset lie in their attempt to focus solely on the powerful yet simple story of an ordinary person genuinely connecting with another ordinary person, and the two films’ aim of intensifying the boring drama of everyday life. In Before Sunset, Jesse and Celine must fill each other on what happened to them during the nine years of no communication in a span of 80 minutes before his plane takes off, and this deadline adds a sense of urgency absent in the prequel. Tension in the film is further amplified by the following: one of the characters pursues why the Vienna reunion did not take place (This piece will only go this far in revealing important details of the movie); allusions or insinuations as to what may have happened had the rendezvous been successful; and now that they are face-to-face again, what is the meaning of Jesse in Celine’s existence and vice-versa.

Director Linklater’s bid to capture all of the above in a linear timeline and a real-time pace give the film a documentary texture. His camera takes the viewers into an enthralling and magnificent trip through the Left Bank streets and the environs of River Seine and the Parisian cobblestone alleys tinted with varying hues of late summer afternoon shadows. More shadows, sensual in effect, are captured inside a French café while Jesse and Celine talk. There are breath-taking scenes of the couple onboard a tourist boat that glides under bridges and overlooking the Notre Dame Cathedral. Tension goes higher as they board an airport limousine reminding the viewers that the 7:30 p.m. deadline is almost at hand.

Several years of collaboration among Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy had produced an outstanding and brilliant screenplay, and the two actors had delivered their kilometric lines as if they were speaking without a script and spontaneously plumb their humanity. Surely, other critics will say that some of the lines of the dialogue are inane, contrived, or self-conscious. This reviewer feels that some of the lines should have been shortened. But come to think of it, real people talk endlessly without making a point, and a lot of them get elected into public posts. Or the constant chattering is used as a veneer to conceal that indeed there is really nothing to discuss. The point is despite some of the shortcomings and weaknesses of the screenplay, it is still superb in distilling and capturing this-very-moment life experience and this-very-moment thought processing.

Go watch this film and have a rendezvous with Jesse and Celine. Beware that you may believe in the mystery of love again.