USA, 2004
Director: Richard Linklater
Score: **

Nine years ago, two strangers met by chance on a train, explored Vienna together, parting BEFORE SUNRISE.  This was the 1995 Richard Linklater film that prompted Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy to reprise their roles when the paths cross again.  This time, they meet at a book autographing session in Paris and spend a few hours together BEFORE SUNSET when Jesse’s flight leaves for New York where he now lives.

The first Linklater film was a fresh anti-Hollywood romance, in which the two principals discuss everything from personal likes and dislikes to politics while testing each person’s opinion and emotional commitment.  The film worked, enthralling the audience in its simplicity in story-telling and complexity in the way the characters of the principals reflect the dialogue.

Alas, BEFORE SUNSET fails in the very aspect BEFORE SUNRISE succeeded.  The idea of two persons spending time together again to discuss ‘everything under the sun’ is first of all, no longer novel.  The reason that they had not met, after such a long spell, fails to convince either.  When the two begin their monologues on their personal subjects, the interaction is jittery if existent at all.  Delpy and Hawke take turns at talking, but they seem off at a tangent the majority of the time.  When Jesse claims that they had made love in the cemetery before and Celine denies the fact (the incident actually did occur), the viewer can only feel the distance between the two.  Yet the script calls for the both to remain together to the very end of sunset when Jesse plane leaves.  There are a few magical moments, reminiscent of how good BEFORE SUNSET was, like the one where Jesse keeps yapping in the car while Celine attempts to touch the back of his head - reflecting a tender moment of one unnoticed by the other.  At its worse, the viewer is forced to listen to Celine’s rendering of an English waltz while Jesse grins into blank space for no rhyme or reason.  BEFORE SUSET also fails to satisfactorily examine the concept of both lovers being given a decent second chance.

The film ends predictably the same way Jesse, who has now become a successful best-selling author has his book turn out.  Enough is enough!  It is time for Hawke, Delpy and Linklater to go on their three separate ways!

• Review by Gilbert Seah.