Before Sunset (4/10)

Copyright © 2004 by Tony Medley

Sitting through this film made me realize, once again, what a remarkably good film My Dinner With Andre (1981) was. That consisted entirely of Wally (Wallace Shawn) having dinner with his old friend Andre (Andre Gregory). It’s mostly Wally listening and Andre talking. Sounds dreadful. It’s brilliant. The two actors are so good that you could watch them have their dinner endlessly. Andre is a raconteur deluxe. Directed by Louis Malle and written by Shawn and Gregory, it’s a tour de force.

Then there’s Before Sunset. It has a lot in common with ‘Andre, in that two of its three writers were the two stars, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (who also wrote three songs; the third writer is Director Richard Linklater), and it consists entirely of conversation between Jesse (Hawke), a writer returning to Paris for a book tour, and Celine (Delpy), with whom he spent a one night stand nine years previously, documented in Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995). She shows up at a roundtable for his book and they go for coffee and take a walk through Paris. There the similarities with ‘Andre end.

I got a feeling for the quality of this film during Jesse’s roundtable with writers at the outset when Linklater throws in a clumsy reverse. I hate reverses when I have to watch them on TV interviews where they’re inserted only to prove that the superstar TV reporter is really there asking questions and with only one camera a reverse is the only way; but in a movie? How unprofessional.

Before Sunset is shot in real time. Jesse has 80 minutes before he has to leave to catch his plane and that’s how long the movie lasts. Because the film takes place in real time in the late afternoon, that was the only time they could shoot. Says Linklater, “It’s like, ‘OK, we’ve got the light for two hours. Go!’ Boom. We do the scene. You have a certain amount of time, limited time. Go.” So there couldn’t be lots of takes, which put pressure on the actors to do clean takes.

The problem starts with the fact that I detected not one iota of chemistry between Jesse and Celine. When there’s chemistry, there is a lot of eye play between the two. There are furtive glances, occasional catching and holding of the eyes, all wordless, but speaking volumes. In a real life situation, where she shows up surprising him after nine years, there would be some awkwardness and some shy eye play. There’s none of that here.

My opinion is that Hawke just isn’t up to playing romantic leads. He was dismal in Taking Lives (2004), which required chemistry between his character and Angelina Jolie in order to make the movie work. It wasn’t there and the movie was a bomb. He was good in Training Day (2001) but he didn’t have to work with a woman.

There were two things that I particularly detested about this film. The first was the smoking scene. While they’re having coffee she lights up and then he does, too. I don’t think two people sitting there blowing smoke in each other’s face is romantic. Given all the disease that smoking causes, and the epidemic of nicotine addiction, especially among the impressionable young, there is no justifiable reason for filmmakers to include smoking in scenes, other than to glorify it. I think it’s despicable when filmmakers insert these gratuitous scenes apotheosizing smoking.

The second is the moral ambivalence about the importance of the family unit and personal responsibility. Jesse has a wife and a four-year-old son and he’s apparently willing to destroy his son’s happy family life so he can hook up with this woman he’s only known for a total of 9 hours or so. His “happiness” is more important.

June 18, 2004

The End