Before Sunset

“I feel like I was never able to forget you.” This one hurts. When this movie first started, I thought it was going to be a movie about nostalgia. Kinda them reminiscing on that night. The good, the bad, the stuff they would change. But then it morphs into this movie about regret and discontentment.> I didn’t love the vibe of the first half. It felt gross that these two were reminiscing about a night together when one is married with a kid and the other has a long-term boyfriend. Their conversations felt inappropriate, and like it was pushing the line of what’s okay to feel between the two of them. I wasn’t a fan of it, to be honest. Then the switch got flipped. And as this movie switched into the regret phase, I found myself sympathizing, and the feeling of grossness and any other negative feelings became invalidated. It’s a very odd feeling.> It really switched for me in the car ride scene, when Celine was talking about how she feels like she can never love again because she gave all of her love to him that night. That monologue stuck with me. It wasn’t just a single night for either of them, it was the culmination of what their fantasies and what they think romance really is.> Then as Jesse started talking about his discontentment with his life with his wife, and how he still dreams of Celine, and how he wishes it was different really hurt me, man. You want to cheer for their love, but you know the conversation they are having is wrong. It’s this very conflicting feeling that I don’t quite understand, let alone know how to articulate.> The song that Celine plays in the end about what that night meant to her made this movie to me. Her explaining that she truly fell in love that night, and how she is lost that he lives off on his island really hit me.> 4.5 feels too high, but a 4 feels too low. I wasn’t loving the first half on how everything came back to sex, I wish their night together meant more than that. But that second half really struck me, about how unfortunate the circumstance is that they are not together.> I don’t know if this review makes any sense, I just threw my incoherent thoughts onto a page, but I think that’s what this movie was trying to do. Give you confliction, and maybe not give you that resolution, but let you decide on your own if what they’re doing is right, and even if it’s not, if you’re okay with just two people trying to be happy.After the sunset, the best hour is always midnight.