Before Sunset
Such a real movie. 80 minutes of straight dialogue between our main characters, Jesse and Celine, as they spend an afternoon in Paris together catching up after several years since they last saw each other that night in Vienna. Beautifully captured in several long takes. Such a simple, yet profound film that transcends the silver screen and hits close to home for lovers and singletons alike.
Love, romance, and fate are themes which are explored during the movie as Jesse and Celine play catch-up. Their conversation takes you on a whirlwind of emotions as you follow them into their lives the past several years. Their conversation starts with talking about Jesse’s romance novel to that one-night stand together in Vienna to their livelihoods to their love life to their hopes and dreams.
My favorite part was when they both open up about how they are dissatisfied with their love lives and Celine gets real flustered. Just raw emotion from both sides. The part that hit the hardest was when Jesse recounted the time when he thought he had seen Celine at a street corner, 13th and Broadway, on the way to his wedding, and it was highly likely that that person was in fact Celine since she said she lived on 11th and Broadway.
Through the course of their conversation, Jesse and Celine are reminded of the reality that life doesn’t have a fairytale ending where the boy and girl fall in love and live happily ever after. That there are such things as never meant to be. They are star-crossed lovers, you could call them.
But that didn’t stop the two from prolonging their ill-fated romance at Celine’s apartment as the movie ends with the iconic exchange:
“Baby, you’re gonna miss that plane.”
”I know.”
Apparently the greatest romance of your life can last longer than one night.