Before Sunset
Throughout the whole movie, I felt like I was looking into a mirror. It honestly shocked me how much it reflected parts of my current life and my recent past. That's all I'll say about that.
Watching Before Sunset felt very personal. Almost every minute of the movie, I could understand exactly how Jesse was feeling. At first, that felt a bit weird, but looking back, it was a completely new experience for me while watching a film.
The thing that stood out to me most was how differently Jesse and Céline seem to look at each other. Jesse never really moved on. Even after nine years, a marriage, and a family, he still remembers every detail about her. The night they spent together was stuck in his head as if it happened only a few months ago.
You can see it in everything he does. He can't take his eyes off her. He tries to find similarities between them. He asks for one of her cigarettes just to be a little closer to her. He jokes around because he wants to see her smile. For most of the movie, he tries to hide how much he still cares, but his eyes give him away every single time.
At the beginning, it almost feels like Jesse was someone to Céline, while Céline was the one for Jesse. They both lived completely different lives after Vienna, but he never stopped holding on to her. At the same time, I don't think he really sees her either. He spent nine years idealizing her and their time together. He ignores every bad thing about her because he's still in love with the memory he created in his head.
What I love most is that Jesse knows this. He seems scared to say too much because he knows he's stuck in the past. But as the movie goes on, he slowly loses the ability to hide it. By the end, he completely breaks down and tells her everything.
And that's when Céline changes too. Maybe she never stopped caring. Maybe she was just afraid to get close to a married man with a family. Once she hears how unhappy he really is, she finally starts opening up as well.
What makes this movie so special is how different it feels from Before Sunrise. The young and dreamy romance from the first film is gone. Everything feels more complicated, more real, and more human.
And for reasons that honestly scared me a little, Jesse felt so much like me that watching him was almost uncomfortable.