before sunset

Also - Julie Delpy, Julie, Julie, Delpy

(slightly annoying) Before Sunrise trivia: did anyone notice that it takes place on Bloomsday?

what about wings of desire/faraway so close?

dude, "jour de fete"

I'm not big on real-time, but I love limited timeframes - one night or one day.

oh yeah, that one was pretty good. although it had a coda that wasn't in the real time scheme.

Still, it was better than Nick of Time.

And really limited-timeframe ones are fantastic, by and large. cf. RL on Dazed and Confused. I totally love that flick.

*shrieks in horror*

Running Time (1997) by Josh Becker is seemingly comprised of just one continuous shot (no visible cuts), so the events in the movie last exactly as long as the movie itself. It's a good and entertaining heist flick, starring cult actor Bruce Campbell. Hitchcock's underrated Rope was obviously the first feature film that was seemingly made with one shot (the cuts were masked, just like in Running Time), but Russian Ark is the first movie which really was made with one shot. The advance of digital movie cameras made this possible; traditional cameras couldn't hold enough film to shoot a feature film without any cuts.

I loved Before Sunrise.

I beleive you are right about Fantastic Voyage. I think they only have 80 minutes in the body before they get big and explode the poor ole fella.

Before Sunrise may well be my favorite Linklater film, although I'd like to see Dazed and Confused again because so many people rave about it now.

i just saw before sunrise the other day and it was pretty good. i think you need a high tolerance for linklaterisms to like it tho.

Will referencing Hawke's real-life literary efforts be de rigeur for critics, like Franz Ferdinand/Archduke etc.?

My sister used to live in the same area as Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman and she'd see them around all the time. She said Thurman seemed really nice and sweet but that Hawke always seemed like he was trying to get recognized and kind of obnoxious.

i felt like a dork when i saw the trailer, because i recognized all the paris locations and had to repress the urge to shout out this fact. there is one scene in shakespeare & co.

julie delpy has aged really well.

xpost - I love Shakespeare and Co! The lady who (co)owns it is very fond of me!

xpost

i found shakespeare & co. overpriced and staffed by pretentious young irishmen.

The other movies of his I have seen have the same kind of attitude; it's portrayed the same way in Before Sunrise, but in Dazed and Confused, for example, it's this way of making fun of all the characters with whom he doesn't identify.

You are right that the characters are earnest in the sense that they are willing to talk at lenght about the way they feel, but I don't feel like that keeps them or the film from being smug.

huh? where is there an inner circle in BS? I find all of the characters in his movies that I've seen (S, D&C, BS, T) to be independent of the individuals around them.

I'm not very good at articulating this, but I guess I am saying that the qualities that many enjoy in Linklater's films still feel forced to me, in comparison to other filmmakers to whom this comes so naturally.

Gabbneb, the inner circle in BS is the two characters, who are alone in understanding each other. That's how I see it,

One that isn't in my currency!

xxxxxx-post: amateur!st, I find the characters smug not in an ironic or detached way, but in this "I have this really interesting way of looking at the world, and everyone except me and my really interesting inner circle is just a total narrow-minded clod" sort of way So, in before sunset, for example, these two characters have what they perceive as these totally fascinating and insightful things to say about the world and themselves and each other, and they are so tortured because no one else seems to understand where they are coming from. And the movie, from my perspective, totally accepts that view that rather than being skeptical of it (in the same way it buys into these characters romance without being skeptical of it).

this is not my interpretation at all.

i think the film implicitly acknowledges the *sameness* of romantic encounters, the fact that a million people have had this feeling before, said these things before... indeed a million people have even made *note* that these things have been done and said before as they were doing them. additionally the characters need not actually be magnificently original to take pleasure in each other's company. as for being "tortured," i don't think the characters are tortured in any serious way. they have doubts and worries, and in fact one of those worries is the very fact that they're aware that those doubts and worries seem rather trivial in the face of the world/eternity.

there's a kind of game-aspect to meeting someone and hitting it off that the film captures really nicely. there's an interesting interplay between the *content* of their talk (what they're talking about) and the *form* (the overall arc of the encounter, what they ultimately want from each other).

i think the film is so successful largely because it has incorporated much of the skepticism you mention and still affirms the rightness of the romantic encounter and allows the characters a kind of individual grace that transcends personality. it has a generous spirit that reminds me of leo mccarey--whose "love affair" would make a natural double bill with "before sunrise."

or is it just me?

Your "argh" would indicate the effects of a painful truth being felt.

otherwise linklater has a great degree of control over his chosen medium. this distinguishes him rather sharply from smith. smith is barely even worth talking about except as some kind of social phenomenon.

ouch!

One that isn't in my currency!

I think I know what you mean by that, but I think it might be because they aren't "in your currency." If you don't like, or haven't had, ice cream, the cold-and-creaminess are going to make all ice creams overwhelmingly similar; but when that isn't the case, there's so little reason to note those properties that they become invisible, and "what's the difference between strawberry and New York Super Fudge Chunk?" starts to make less sense to ask.

(xposts)

xpost - understood!

This is the statement that's weird to me. Nearly every character is "made fun of" in some way, but the only characters who end up coming off poorly are Parker Posey's character and Ben Affleck's character.

And if you want to talk shitty Linklater movies, let's talk "Suburbia." Yech.

Also - Full disclosure - I have never seen Slacker!

Carry on.

But where we differ is that I think the perspective of the film itself is that these two are RIGHT in thinking they are special, that these two people really are special and different. And of course there is a way in which they are special, just like any two people in love are special. But I guess I feel that the movie doesn't celebrate the fact that these two are in love as much as it celebrates the fact that these two people are special and interesting, and seems to suggest that they only fall in love with each other because they are both so special and interesting. The characters seem as in love with themselves as they are with one another, and the film seems more in love with the individual characters than it is with their supposed romance (which, am I the only one who just doesn't really buy it? I don't THINK I am hard hearted, but maybe...)

Although, I have to admit, amatuer!st, your description of the film is more enjoyable for me than the film itself was. It almost makes me want to see it again. Almost. I guess I am glad someone could get such an optimistic feeling from it.

As for making fun of the characters in D and C, I have to admit to not being able to go into detail, as I havent seen it since it first came out; it was the impression I had at the time.

I haven't seen Before Sunrise, incidentally, so the sequel is not a culture-shaking event for me.

That's not what happened to me, just a word of advice.

We'll get this ball rolling even if we have to push it uphill all by ourselves!!!

I don't get a lot of the criticisms of Linklater here - he doesn't make fun of the characters in Dazed and Confused at all. I feel like he enjoys them, even O'Bannion (the Affleck character) and views them affectionately.

The only film I see that tortured-cuz-no-one-gets-me stuff is in subUrbia, and Linklater/Bogosian don't take a great view of it - the sympathetic characters aren't the bitter alcoholic or the performance-artist wannabe. The convenience store workers, BeBe and Steve Zahn are the only ones who come off well, and exhibit none of that angst.

Is that an I-look-like-Jason-Lee joke?

1. I really want to see Before Sunset.
2. I have not yet seen the trailer. Maybe later.
3. Before Sunrise is my favorite Linklater film, but I haven't seen it since it came out.
4. I liked Chasing Amy at the time. I'm not sure I'd rep for it now. I will rep for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back because it's breezy and stupid and has no grander ambitions than that.
5. Waking Life is one of the most overrated movies of the last five years.
6. In the sense that both Smith and Linklater are "talky" directors, it makes sense to compare them. (And their debuts, Clerks and Slacker, are both day-in-the-life, episodic, let-the-camera-eavesdrop sorts of films.)
7. In general, I like talkiness. But when the talkiness is uncompelling, or is talkiness-for-its-own-sake, or exists to hide an incompetence at other aspects of filmmaking, then it can be the worst shit imaginable. Both Linklater and Smith have fallen prey to some of these errors.
8. Linklater talkiness that's "for its own sake" (empty, pretentious): Waking Life. Linklater talkiness that's riveting: Tape. (I don't what it says that he didn't actually write that one, though.)
9. Smith and Linklater also both drawn to hermetic environments: cf. Tape and Clerks both taking place in single rooms (more or less). (Even maybe Mallrats [the mall] and SubUrbia [the convenience store, although as I recall the film veered from that single locale more than Bogosian's play did]?) I like formal limitations like this (or like the "24-hour movie").

Yes, but it's funny because you don't! Where DID that come from???

I guess I don't like "talkiness". Except for Woody Allen.

...

scott: to summarize, i think what you see as indulgence (of the characters), i see as generosity.

perhaps our different takes on it have to do with our readings of the vagaries of the acting by delpy and hawke--people's reactions to acting, like acting itself, tend to be quite mysterious and difficult to explain. a lot of people hate ethan hawke, in this and other films. i've always liked him. he is perhaps a bit foppish in real life (his bad boho novel, bad boho film, etc.) but i think this quality actually contributes to the lifelikeness of the characterization in "before sunrise." indeed one of the pleasures of the film, one of the ways it seems to capture the rhythms of conversation almost uncannily, is how hawke routinely pushes a point a little too hard, raises a subject only to watch it flounce, etc. and how willing delpy is to move the conversation along nonetheless. that's an example of what i mean about form and content.

i'm so psyched

all y'all hatas can have a nice walk and a lemonade

Published: May 9, 2004

Taylor Jones for The New York Times
Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater taking time out from the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Tex., to talk about "Before Sunset."

"BEFORE SUNRISE," Richard Linklater's charming 1995 comedy starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, ended with a promise: the two characters, Jesse and Celine, would meet in Vienna six months later to continue the romance that began with a chance meeting on a train. Only a modest success at the time of its release, the film has become a dorm-room classic (much like Mr. Linklater's first two films, "Slacker" and "Dazed and Confused") with its portrait of reluctant adults torn between the cynicism of the day and the romance of their youth. Now Mr. Linklater, Ms. Delpy and Mr. Hawke have collaborated on "Before Sunset," which picks up the story nine years later when Jesse and Celine meet at a Paris bookstore where Jesse is promoting his first novel, based on the night they spent together. The three share screenwriting credit on the film, which is dialogue heavy and packed with stirring monologues and grown-up revelations. In March, "Before Sunset" played at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Mr. Linklater's hometown. He joined Ms. Delpy and Mr. Hawke to talk with Sarah Hepola about their collaboration.

SARAH HEPOLA This is the kind of project that people talk about doing a lot. When did you decide to actually do it?

ETHAN HAWKE It was about a year after. We were all in L.A. We had a breakfast or something. It was in the air pretty early.

It's just so rare that a sequel doesn't come out in the next year or two after the first one. But the first one wasn't a big success or anything. So there was no economic motivation.

RICHARD LINKLATER It seemed over time to get more successful. It was made for $2.7 million, and it made over $20 million.

HEPOLA It's a film I still see on lists of top-10 romantic films.

LINKLATER It's one of those that kind of sneaks up. It's funny how films have their economic life in that window when they come out. Our film was weird. There wasn't a lot of music in it. It wasn't MTV-style. It had nothing to do with the pop culture moment. There were no references to anything. It was just two people.

HEPOLA Why did it take so many years to return to Jesse and Celine?

LINKLATER It took us that long to come up with the right idea. And as more time went by, it changed how we could write it. You know, the original idea of the sequel was to do it six months later. Well, nine years went by and we didn't make the six-months-later version, so we had to come up with a new version of what happened.

HEPOLA There's a scene in the movie where Jesse is sort of pressed by journalists and fans about how his story turned out. Was that an experience that the three of you had after "Before Sunrise"?

JULIE DELPY I think, yeah.

HAWKE Everybody did. That was the question.

LINKLATER It was the question.

DELPY "What happens to them?"

HEPOLA And how did you respond to that?

LINKLATER I responded to it the same way he does in the movie. I always said that the movie was a litmus test for how you view romance. Some people would go: "It's so clear. They will never get back together." People were so sure. Based on their own ——

DELPY Their romantic history.

LINKLATER History, yeah. So I just kind of thought it was — I always thought they did get back together. So I always thought they would.

HEPOLA What did you two think?

DELPY I thought they would.

HAWKE I always thought they would. [To Delpy] I knew you would come back.

HEPOLA So among the decisions that you needed to make when doing this sequel was to decide if they were going to have returned.

DELPY It was clear they didn't meet again six months later.

HAWKE But it had to be not like they didn't try.

LINKLATER We all liked the idea that fate kind of kept them apart. It's so dumb to make it where you have to meet each other one day, because what if something happened that day?

HAWKE There was a design flaw in their plan. Due to their romanticism they left no backups.

LINKLATER What's funny about "Before Sunrise" is that you couldn't make that film now. Because there really would be ——

DELPY E-mail now. They would exchange e-mails.

LINKLATER It's unfathomable that they wouldn't instant message each other.

DELPY I was always thinking, what would stop her from going back? It would only be something really serious, like the death of someone really close to her. The death of her grandmother . . .

HEPOLA So you sat down in L.A. and hammered out an outline.

LINKLATER We weren't starting from a blank page. We had been tossing around ideas for years. But the first thing was coming up with the idea of it being in real time.

HEPOLA What were your initial notions about what had happened to your characters? Julie, you said you thought she might have been a cosmologist.

DELPY Yeah, at first. Cosmologist I thought was interesting because I love science. And you have to be passionate to do that. After a while I got more and more involved with friends of mine that were activists. And I was like, O.K., she's going to have to be an activist, because it's going to be so easy for me to write this — I can just take from people I spend all day with every day of my life.

HEPOLA [To Hawke] And of course your character has written books.

HAWKE Yeah. That idea spawned out of Rick coming to a reading of mine.

LINKLATER Yeah. I introduced you at a reading here. It seemed like a good kickoff. Such a fun way for them to meet again.

HAWKE It's kind of a romantic notion, too.

LINKLATER Yeah. That you would write something about somebody.

HAWKE And that would be a way to conjure them back in your life.

LINKLATER You know, the very first movie was made — I mean, my acorn of an idea way back then was, I met this woman in Philadelphia. And we spent a night walking around. And it was great. And I was thinking, "This could be a movie." Filmmaker's curse. I'm walking around going, "If I could just capture this feeling I'm having right now," instead of actually having that feeling. But I always thought maybe she would show up at a "Before Sunrise" screening or something. She never did. But I always expected, "Oh, hi, I'm Amy. Remember me?" It would be so weird.

HEPOLA So getting back to the three days that you spent writing. If you could just tell me about how that happened. You just sit around talking?

HAWKE We just goof off a lot. We play music and we talk. We talk about life. And we ——

LINKLATER You show up with ideas. You go, O.K., it's going to happen in real time.

HAWKE —— digress into environmental and political issues.

LINKLATER O.K., great, it's going to start in a bookstore. What happens then?

DELPY What they're doing. Why they didn't show up [for their reunion].

LINKLATER There were all the specifics of why and what, but then there was what we just called the emotional trajectory. This is the part where they're getting to know one another again.

HAWKE Yeah, you can't have too serious a conversation when you first meet. You have to have more of a flirty dialogue. O.K. Then you're going to talk about politics or something that isn't personal, but ——

LINKLATER But you're expressing who you are.

HAWKE Yeah, basically trying to seduce each other with how interesting their ideas are, but without coming on to each other.

DELPY It's flirting without flirting.

HAWKE And then you're going to have to take it to the next level, where you actually talk about something personal.

DELPY Kidding around about sex.

HAWKE Yeah, that's right, then the flirtation turns into sexual dialogue. Then you've got to dig even deeper and say something really personal. And then you can make love.

LINKLATER What happened is, we could start setting up this basic outline. And then we would just talk. And then we would leave it for six months.

HAWKE Julie was writing volumes. And I was writing monologues for my character. And Rick was assembling all this stuff and writing a bunch of stuff himself.

LINKLATER It was a first draft, we could say. Then we got together in Paris.

HAWKE It was enough to get the money together for the movie.

HEPOLA [To Hawke] At one point your character says that people don't change. But there are certain things that did change about these two. In some ways, they've switched roles.

DELPY She was the romantic, the one who wanted more of a relationship.

HAWKE In the first one, yeah. He's more cynical in the first one, yeah.

DELPY I think it's because she was so romantic in the first film, she probably got hurt maybe more than he had.

HAWKE And because he was so cynical, he's now looking for meaning. That whole thing about that idea of people changing or not changing is kind of interesting. I don't think they were that different. It's like when a baby is born — I just noticed this with my own daughter. You look at a picture of a kid when they're 9 months old and you look at a picture of them when they're 7 or something. And you say it looks like her. But when they're 9 months old, you don't know what are the parts of them that are going to be consistent and which are going to go away. It always looks like the same person. But you can't identify which ones are the center. You know? People do change and they don't change.

DELPY People get tougher and this and that. But I always think, like I say in the film, reading a journal from when you're a kid, what you are deep inside, the way you sense things, the way you sense the outside world and the way you analyze it, will always stay the same.

HEPOLA I'm curious what you think when you see yourself in the earlier film.

HAWKE It was surprising. You see these cuts of the first movie and you're like, "Wow." Because you feel like the same person, you know? But you look at it and you go, "I was really a kid, man."

LINKLATER You guys were 23?

HAWKE Twenty-three years old.

DELPY Yeah, we've changed. I don't mind. I don't mind changing. I don't mind getting older.

HEPOLA In the film, Celine says that the book stirs up a lot of emotions for her. Does watching the first film stir up emotions for all three of you?

DELPY Yeah, it did.

LINKLATER I'm behind the camera, so there's no real record of me. Yeah, I mean sure, nine years older, nine years, you know. Life goes on.

DELPY Wiser.

LINKLATER Wiser, more naïve.

DELPY Happier, I think.

LINKLATER More resolved about life or something.

DELPY Happier.  

***

Rosenbaum's review

I can't believe it's tanking at the box office! There is no justice in the world.

I don't think I look much like Linklater!

(Many reviews assume that the bookstore we see is the famous one run by Sylvia Beach, who first published James Joyce's Ulysses; in fact, it's a shop that appropriated the name when it opened in the 50s in order to attract tourists -- which doesn't mean that it isn't a respectable literary hangout in its own right, more beat than early modernist in its orientation.)

I got TOLD. But hey the shop in the film doesn't refer to any actually existing shop, and is meant to signify Joyce, continuing the Bloomsday thing right?

God though, see this film.

er, the store exists. in the present time. i went there a few times this year. it's a likely place for an american author to do a reading in paris. and they do have an apartment above the shop (actually, it's practically *in* the shop).

anal question: do you know if anyone has done a map/chart of their journey?

i have to see it again.

difficulty w/ spotting places in paris films is: they do like uniformity. so the park furniture *does* look like that about les halles (but without as many drunks). i can't think of any parks like it on the left bank (nr shkspr and co).

Here's maybe a good guideline: Can you imagine them on Leno or Letterman? Kevin Smith and Scorsese and Tarantino I can see easy. (And I have.) I can't imagine Richard Linklater or P.T. Anderson or Robert Rodriguez.

Hahaha! And people were harshing on ILF for being too obscure...

As Henry Miller said in his response to Pete's comments here the pair of them were far less insufferable this time round. My main criticism would be that the arc of the film seemed more contrived this time than last - the big revelations in the car didn't seem to emerge naturally (the dowmside of having a film play out in real time I guess).

Also there were a few too many lies/deceptions/statements followed by a "just kidding" I thought.

Now, this is weird, but S&S has a policy here, sex is always called 'fucking'. In general S&S is a conservative magazine, and it sits ill, for me anyway. After all, it's setting up a big sex/love dichotomy, isn't it? Fucking != romance apparently. Fine, but it's never explored as an idea. And actually the characters in 'Before Sunset' aren't particularly coy -- okay, more coy than characters in Breillat films, but less so, by a long way, than Scarlett and Bill.

*warning: quasi - spoiler that won't actually spoil anything for anyone to follow*

i had what may be my funniest moment of the year a couple minutes after the film, with the ex-druggy but permanentally-damaged friend-of-friend that i saw the film with asking, sincerely: "was the guy's name waltz?"

i thought the ending was rubbish. WHY do people say it isn't? it looked...made up on the spot. and not in a good way. what the fck are we meant to get from her comedy nina simone impression?

way disappointed by this movie. loved the first one.

youre all crackers!!!

i thought the ending was a little predictable, tho.

woody harrelson is funny in everything he does. he should be in more movies.

And yeah, the ending was great. The only gripe I had about Before Sunset is that it ruined the wonderful open ending of Before Sunrise (which I still think is better of the two, as great as the sequel was), because now we know the pair didn't meet after six months. Of course, you could still treat the two films as two different entities, and say that in the universe of Before Sunrise they might've still met.

I really wish that Linklater would stick to this stuff - his Philip K. Dick adaptation looks awful and the Bad News Bears is just School of Rock mixed with Bad Santa

http://cache.indemand.com/shared/prod/28054_l.jpg

anyway, i like it the best of the three. i don't think linklater directed it, tho?

also, she is very good in europa, europa.

this has been your julie delpy news bulletin.

'the Bad News Bears is just School of Rock mixed with Bad Santa'

that sounds GREAT!: roffles mixed with more roffles.

Apparently she's about to direct a film on Elizabeth Bathory. Very intriguing...

Was 'Before Sunset' the closest we will ever get to an American Eric Rohmer movie?

yes, by law

Does anyone think they can muster up a Walking Route for this movie, or point at specific Paris locations? We've already conquered Shakespeare & Co, and the Park they Walk In. It is nowhere near where they start their stroll so I imagine nothing else is. Quai Henri IV doesn't look the same...

These folks will probably have it: http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/sunriseandsunset/

Was 'Before Sunset' the closest we will ever get to an American Eric Rohmer movie?

Jesus God Almighty forgive you

the stroll they take in the movie actually doesn't conform to paris geography. a bit of an "artificial geography" to quote kuleshov. still, you could probably find all the various locations.

I'm watching this again for the first time since I saw it in the theater. God damn this is a great movie. It resonates with me so strongly on so many levels and yeah . . . I fucking love this movie.

the thing that struck me seeing it the second and third times was how carefully structured it is. not as obvious the first time through, when it just seemed to flow (and of course i didn't know the trajectory). but it's really carefully plotted, storywise but also locationwise, if you pay attention to where they are at the various turning points in the conversation -- walking or on a bus or on the boat, etc. i really love both of these movies.

Interesting. I didn't notice that much but it's only the second time I've seen it. I'll watch again soon with that in mind.

yeah i mean, it's not a secret code or anything, just that the rhythms and ebbs and flows of the dialogue are very much cued by where they are, whether they're moving or keeping still, whether they're walking or riding or floating. they're always where they should be for the things that are being said. it's very precise, but feels spontaneous.

(true in the first movie too, obviously. both movies really use their locations so well. it'd be interesting, if there's a third one, to do it in america and see how that affected it.)

The conversations they have echo the conversations they had in the first movie in clever ways, and their relationship progresses in a similar way but with neat little differences. And the ending is one of my favorite endings.

great film

<3

It still holds up. Love it. Ethan Hawke though -- ick. I wouldn't sing my Nina Simone cover to a guy with teeth and cheekbones so rodent-like.

i love the part where he cuts her off, about his 'scar'- what, like a bullet wound?.
i always hated EH on account of the bit in great expectations where he's howling at the sky and OSCAR CLIP is flashing on the bottom of the screen, & then saw him on inside the actor's studio and was powerless to resist his charm, could subsequently not see a film with him w/o being well if it isn't that nice young ethan hawke

i think ethan hawke's face decayed because he dogged uma thurman. i love this movie.

Physically he's not aged well at all that much is true but Schlump otm he is totally charming in interviews and I will always have mad love for him. He was my first big celebrity crush when I was a kid after all.

I like to think there was something else going on behind the scenes with Um that we don't know about. Then I remember what Gary Oldman said about her and think maybe Ethan was just an asshole but in the end I don't care that much tbh.

what did gary oldman say about her?

I don't all get the criticism written above about the film's "smugness." From the way the scenes are framed and edited (Linklater's reaction shots are precisely timed) we know exactly when we're supposed to think these two are full of shit. Also I love how Linklater understands how we use cynical/fatalistic twaddle at any age if it means the person we love is going to respond.

i don't think they're that full of shit in this one! in sunrise, sure, because they're babies

OTM - love sunrise too of course

Maybe I will watch one of them tonight. I own both. obv.

Oldman on Thurman - paraphrasing but when asked why their v short-lived marriage ended he said something along the lines of, "Well, you try being married to an angel".

i don't think they're that full of shit in this one! in sunrise, sure, because they're babies

Celine knows Jesse's novel is shit ("I usually hate romantic novels," she makes sure to tell him). And I got the sense that until he shares his marital problems all that guff about Trappist monks and his insights into human behavior are mere responses to the intellectual stimulation Celine provides. To me it speaks to the power of the movie that I don't dislike him a bit.

he's definitely dumber than celine; these movies are in love with her. i didn't really get that his novel was bad!

The worst scenes are those in which Jesse discusses his novel, making it perfectly clear he's never read a book. When those scenes ended I marveled at his luck: hiring an agent who booked him in a chi chi Paris bookstore and journalists asking him questions.

lol i don't really buy that, but i appreciate your scorn.

so what will the NEXT sequel be called?

Before Breakfast, in which Jesse and Celine bump into each other in a Bushwick cafe after their relationship ended in 2007. Jesse suffers the ignominy of seeing his novel remaindered at a Borders that's going out of business.

Strange, I was *just* wondering a few hours ago if there was going to be a new one in 2013.

google image search not really delivering on my search for pictures of EH, in maroon polo-neck w/goatee, in before sunrise, illustrating every constituent part of what it means to be a teenage crush

http://www.river-phoenix.org/filmography/explorers/page2/ethan-hawke.jpg

He was still so handsome in sunrise. In fact, the diff in how he looks between the two movies is really startling.

Yeah Al I'm not buying that either but it's interesting.

x-post - Pic from when he was a kid is from his first movie Explorers iirc. Yes, I know too much. Clearly.

this movie creepily echos a lot of shit I am going through right now, it's horrible to watch

how good was his novel?

I miss the sequence of odd Vienna night owls. Paris seems empty in comparison.

x-post - Hawke's?

it's horrible to watch

timeless critique

so they're shooting the third one this summer

Yay!

hard to top sunset though

Yeah, I'm sort of wondering if this will be the romantic comedown installment.

Before Sunset Rises

per Armond's opinion of how Linklater makes Europe look, will this one be in Hoboken?

YAY!

Here's to hoping they don't fuck it up. I'm hopeful though.

I am the cow! *makes little horns*

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/surprise-richard-linklater-has-completed-before-midnight-with-ethan-hawke-julie-delpy-20120905#

Ready to believe in love. Again.

AHH!

They better not have fucked it all up with this one. I was worried before the second and proven way wrong so hopefully will be again.

AHH!

oh wait I said the same thing two months ago

YAY!

Here's to hoping they don't fuck it up. I'm hopeful though.

I am the cow! *makes little horns*

― wolf kabob (ENBB), Thursday, June 14, 2012 9:28 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

We all hope.

awww

sure to be another mediocre Linklater film

BE NICE

another one hot off the w3b3r grill

presold indie bullshit

http://nutshell-movies.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/siskel-and-ebert.jpg

another one hot off the w3b3r grill

― pun lovin criminal (polyphonic), Wednesday, September 5, 2012 2:47 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol

plz only riff on my intergalactic name

seeing a Delpy character wasting her time with Hawke just makes this series an unpleasant tragedy

bi11'z gri11'z

vv hopeful

<3 Ethan and Delpy

though I always want to call her Derpy

argh, I was really hoping Linklater wouldn't do this. the first two films were just so perfect as a diptych (duology?) and I really wanted the story to end there

in fact I told him this at a screening a few years ago. unaccountably, he seems to have ignored my pleas

it wd be very screwball if I actually liked this one.

morbz, stop beating around the bush and tell us whether you liked the earlier films or not

x-post - Well since he managed to make the other two so perfect then perhaps he can do it again?! Just maybe?

I wonder how they'll play it though. I was talking about this the other night (randomly) and we were saying that the only way we could see it would make sense if if he had missed his plane and spent the night after the last one and then what, they stayed in touch while he ended his marriage and ran off to Greece together? I just don't know. Hmmmm.

how is a movie made in secret "pre-sold"

wait, before SUNSET was *nine* years ago?

jesus wept.

I KNOW

shit

really?

;_;

how is a movie made in secret "pre-sold"

It won't be released in secret, unless I get my way.

Plot: Hawke destroys Greek economy by buying all the overpriced heroin.

They'll never get to Before 49 Up at this rate.

Bernie was really good

OK I had to stop reading about a paragraph in because there were spoilers I wish I didn't see but maybe some of you don't care.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117949042/#.UP1rd6GZBuw.facebook

stoked for this. unbookmarking thread until i see it.

lots of positives (some hugely positive) out of Sundance.

a friend of mine writes for one of the late night comedy shows, and he's a huge fan of the two films, and I told him that for a bit on the program -- the next time they have Delpy or Hawke as a guest -- they film a sketch where the host, or joe average, bumps into Delpy or Hawke IRL and within a few seconds of making polite small talk and breaking the ice there's a smash cut to taking out-of-the-ordinary transportation with them and just chewing the fat about life and its discontents.

we both laughed at the idea but agreed it's probably too obscure a reference for the show to do, but if they are on the show promoting the third film I'll probably beg him to do it.

oh god there's another stupid one of these stupid films

what an awesome and insightful post

we love these films thomp, take your grouchiness and stick it

stick it up yr delpy, thomp

still hope she smothers him w/ a pillow at the end

lol

I hope she dances to Nina Simone again

really, to suggest that it would take a woman 20 years to dump Ethan Hawke is misogynistic.

especially since his teeth just get weirder and weirder

reviews, of sorts, coming in

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/before-midnight

Ok so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxLRT3IVasc

Denby sez the 30-minute Jesse-Celine fight is as harrowing as anything in Scenes From a Marriage.

Echoed by Leitch

http://deadspin.com/before-midnight-is-darker-than-you-want-it-to-be-509025997

Long line outside Lincoln Center 2 hours before a chat among Hawke, Delpy, Linklater (no movie): as harrowing as anything in Scenes From a Marriage.

i've heard it's as harrowing as anything in scenes from a mall

That IS harrowing. But nothing can be as scary as Woody Allen's ponytail.

jesus christ that scared the shit out of me

irl lol

the funny thing is that talk was moderated by Phillip Lopate, who in his current Film Comment encomium to the trilogy calls Hawke "rat-like."

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/before-midnight-richard-linklater

At least he doesn't call him "Hawkes," as Armond does throughout his review.

i will see the fuck out of this movie

also all the projects linklater has mooted as his next sound pretty promising too

He's uneven as hell but he's one of my favorite American directors.

he has permanent love from me for slacker

first 2 features best, followed by the 2 animations.

he is one of my favourite living directors

i will see the fuck out of this movie

same, i hope it shows somewhere in town?

it's playing in 5 theaters this weekend.

richard brody has a totally unreadable takedown of the "before..." series on the nyorker site, i won't even bother to link to it. i don't think that guy has ever had anything interesting to say. he's always gaseous and vague, not to mention a pompous show-off. and i hate his beard.

I'll get you his Godard book for Christmas.

Heh, "rat-like." I mean, Hawke hasn't aged the most gracefully of his generation, but damn.

we should all have such problems as looking like ethan hawke

hey, some people look like rats, what are you gonna do, not have rat people try to act the shit out of some stuff? it's not like there aren't people out there who would like to see all the kinds of people there are in the world on the screen

ethan hawke still looks alright to me... maybe he could use a shower idk

amateurist otm re: richard brody, that dude's insufferable.

'school of rock' is my fav linklater i think.

ethan hawke still looks alright to me... maybe he could use a shower idk

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Friday, May 24, 2013 6:07 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

one for the poster

http://magazine.foxnews.com/sites/magazine.foxnews.com/files/styles/700_image/public/FrostyHawke.jpg

bob marley lookin pretty rodenty lately

yep, Brody's awesome!

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/05/before-midnight-after-birth.html

...until he praises Bernie, which is even worse than this stuff.

you can almost see him smirk when he calls RL 'one of the better american filmmakers.' what a shithead.

aw Morbs hated Bernie? was sure he'd have liked it. goes to show i can't judge other's taste.

ethan hawke still looks alright to me... maybe he could use a shower idk

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Friday, May 24, 2013

He could use a scrubbing and deodorant.

bernie was so cool

uh J.D., Brody LIKES Linklater when he's not doing this wank.

Bernie was nice liberal hetero homophobia, with a revue-skit star turn.

I find Hawke's consistent screen personality to be more ratlike than his physiognomy. His best perf in a RL film is Tape.

I can cop to that. He was unbearable in Things to do in Denver... but then the whole cast was.

When he's off his game, Linklater is Kevin Smith for people who graduated.

When he's off his game is when he's rotoscoping.

nah, even Hawke & Delpy assumed three dimensions in Waking Life

Nah nah nah nah.

Morbs, I don't understand your objections to these movies yet.

bernie just felt kind of inert to me, but my partner liked it

hawke is still a good looking man! maybe a little skinny these days, but

xpost

you will never understand! helping you understand is not, like, a thing he does

did we talk about bernie on another thread? can't find it.

anyway--maybe it helps to be texan or be familiar with texas but i thought it was end-to-end hilarious and brilliant. a kind of ethnography of a very particular culture.

ah it was this thread: RICHARD LINKLATER

Would be genuinely interested in seeing a list from Morbs of romantic movies he likes. Not screwball "women be different than men" romance. The joining of compatible souls romance.

If you gave me a day, I might think of some non-comedies.

Alfred: I don't write reviews here, esp of films I saw nine and 18 years ago. In a nutshell, not especially amusing or convincing talk for 90+ minutes and, as Armond said of the 2nd one, "shooting Paris like Hoboken."

(and the Hawke = Repulsive Factor)

"The joining of compatible souls"

Invoking Welles' "knowing when to end the story" maxim, eh?

And waking life is the one you liked?? smh

Shooting Paris like Hoboken is part of the film's charm -- Paris is demystified.

"the one"? I said Slacker and D&C.

You know why I like great love songs, by Merritt or Bacharach-David? They tell their lies so well.

I tend to trust Brody that I would like this better than the first two, since characters over 40, all else being equal, are of greater interest to me.

I got the answer I needed.

as Sydney Pollack pointed out, at the end of all the great Hollywood romance films, the couple isn't together.

that is not true and if you think it is true you are every bit the idiot we all assume you to be

i can see why you like richard brody, you both are really into unsubstantiated grandiose claims

as i read your comment three things immediately came to find

the quiet man
man's castle
almost every screwball comedy-romance ever (incl. his girl friday, the awful truth, bringing up baby, etc.)

hell, even notorious

i mean, there's no shortages of romances w/ tragic or bittersweet endings, but there is no real shortage of romances the end in romantic clinches--it's a cliché for a reason!

richard brody is this dude who can patter on and on and sound reasonably credible and knowledgable until he writes something completely asinine/unsubstantiated/ahistorical/deeply clichéd and you kind of wonder if he knows anything about film at all

i feel like he's got a lot of the sophisticated-film-critic "moves" down (he knows the right line on godard, for example) but very little that he writes pushes past that, at least not without being fatally vague

I was excluding comedies, if you can hold more than one of my posts in your fucking empty head at one time, you dim motherfucker.

bye thread

these films are great because of delpy, face it. and I will see this one because I love her.

i see you like unsubstantiated grandiose claims

no it is substantiated that I love her

but even if you exclude comedies that's a gross generalization, I'm not even sure it's true the half the time!

hell even in written on the wind rock hudson and lauren bacall end up hightailing it together

or all that heaven allows, rock is gonna need some physical therapy sure but he's with jane wyman

with Walt Whitman by his side.

Hawke was my first huge celebrity crush and he has NOT aged well at all. That said, he seems to look better in this than he did in the last one. It's ok though - EH I still luv you baby.

I still can't wait to see this.

I luv you too, BB!

HAHAHAHAHA

the way his mouth and/or jaw has kind of, idk, shrunk, like he has meth-mouth is v disconcerting.

but I'm with ENBB. (re Ethan, also Eric)

ENBB otm. I don't get this Hawke hate on ILE. No matter what he does with his hair. Once a hunk, always a hunk.

To me he's always been a very rat-like douchebag, I don't understand his appeal.

he always had that scruffy-hot thing going on, at least for me.

But what about his ....acting?

his whatnow?

:)

The least satisfying of the three movies. The dinner scene unbearable -- a bad Woody Allen imitation.

The review.

that's an excellent review--i didn't even know you had a blog, will bookmark it!

one small note though: when you credit the dialogue, shouldn't it be shared among linklater, delpy, and hawke, rather than just attributing it to linklater?

Thanks!

that's an oversight. I did allude to the shared screenwriting credit at one point though.

smdh @ u alfred

lol why?

i was joking :)

:)

In the 2004 sequel Before Sunset Jesse and Celine stood even more revealed: novelist Jesse, as played by Ethan Hawke, can’t suppress an instinct to sound deeply informed about everything; and Julie Delpy’s Celine quivers and emits small bolts of nervous energy, like the filament of a working light bulb exposed.

Bro, don't know how to tell you this, but you only use a semicolon to separate two independent clauses. Your second clause is dependent on the first.

Also, filaments don't emit nervous energy.

My dad was E.B. White

That's not its "only" use.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon

You don't use it with conjunctions.

It's fine, as I tell my students, if it's setting off items in a list, especially if one of the clauses preceding it is complex.

But do go on.

Also: a sentence with a colon *and* a semicolon? Who do you thnk you are, Agatha Christe??

Oh it's fine in a list! You just used it wrong.

Before Waterface

If Before Midnight is the least of the three films, it’s because it tests most rigorously our tolerance for Jesse and Celine;

Yep, I'm sick of 'em both. In addition, Jesse's personality at the end seems kinda over the top, and so he's not a believable flawed character.

It's fine, as I tell my students, if it's setting off items in a list, especially if one of the clauses preceding it is complex.

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, June 11, 2013 8:27 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you only use it for setting off items in a list if one or more of the items in the list itself contains a comma!

otherwise it's just, like, use a comma

linking the oatmeal pretty next-level heel branding

I've read too many 20th century English essayists.

the oatmeal was the second result, lay off me.

both of the items in alfred's list contained commas

It's also easy to understand--big pictures, few words.

is it tho?

http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/comics/semicolon/super.png

I don't know? What do you want me to say>? yes? You can't understand a fat guy eating a sack of mayo?

both of the items in alfred's list contained commas

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, June 11, 2013 1:56 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right, so he used the semicolon correctly!

or wait, that was a single sentence, not a list, right?

i dunno, too lazy to look at the blog again

oh i thought you were saying he didn't; carry on.

it was a single sentence, Einstein

it was a list of ways in which jesse and celine stand even more revealed

guys, did you know that the oatmeal also shows how you can use the semicolon as a wink

The rule is it has to be a list of items, not a list of descriptions.

haha

i.e. nouns

Many novelists and essayists have used the semicolon to break two clauses when the first is already long enough and boasts a comma or commas.

;_;

before; midnight

this was terrific
also as are semi-colons but stop talking about that

so good, I am gonna go home to read Alfred's dissent, so I can talk shit about it

lol

I didn't dissent!

ha. nice piece, Alfred; always enjoy your film writing but don't have your blog on my mental rolodex; I will rectify this. i felt a good deal more fondly towards the grecian dinner scene than you did - to me its reflexes, hawke's garrulousness, the older woman's sentiment, the tendencies towards broad gender talk, felt very true to life, true to the space they were in, familiar.

feel even more strongly in favour of this a day after; its kind of explosion of the behaviours and suggestions of the previous films feels so respectable, & such a successful result of its gamble. obviously one of the disadvantages of continuing this series is rescinding its ambiguity, committing it to a single path, but it just felt so accurate & honest. i remember reading an interview with delpy & chris rock, after the movie they made together, in which she talked about how the batch of generic jennifer aniston/owen wilson kinda romcoms are always weirdly teenage, like it's thirty year olds waiting on the magic of a first kiss, & how she wanted to do something adult. this just felt really smart, & well accessorised in terms of like real-life hotel room luxury, a marital type of nudity, &c.

something neglected in discussion of the bergmanism of the end of this film is how funny it is - the audience i saw it with were laughing so hard, & it's terrifically punctuated with humour, like there's a tidal quality that balances the heaviness with laughter, celine in the church, the friction at the dinnertable, any number of things in the last section. there is also no way that it could really ever be as annoying as scenes from a marriage.

i would've thought morbs would like this, too, fwiw, though i'm frustrated to see he read the lopate piece in film comment, which is disappointing in offering very little yet giving away every single plot point. fuck three page film synopses.

& lastly: really terrific hawke performance in this. something of tom waits in his older male.

I don't know how Morbs would like this after hating the middle one, but maybe the third film's comparatively pessimistic outlook might tip the scales.

I love all three movies better as a whole than I do any individual installment.

that seems reasonable. pretty happy calling this the best of the three, just for its confident breadth - both in breaking away from the pretty narrow focus to include others in those long scenes, & in its emotional range, embrace & demonstration of contradictions, & un-strained (fuck you noah boambach) achievement of the thing that Rohmer, Eustache got, scenes of life naturally unfolding

what's the next one: Before Drinks?

Before Dawn.

Taylor Lautner will play Jesse's son.

Before Lunch - they have elevenses with the hobbits

http://moreintelligentlife.co.uk/content/arts/anonymous/midnight

trust me schlump, i just skimmed the Lopate thing

that's cool, I'm glad. reluctant to actively hype this & have no idea if you'll see it but it's quite a different film from the other two; it has this very unadorned, formal structure that centres all of the classic-European-talky dialogue. very strong, I think, with a really commanding Hawke performance.

i dug this. was tempted to re-watch the earlier ones before but I think it's worth them being distant pleasant memories the first time around, as it is for the characters. i do want to watch them over relatively quick succession sometime though.

if it werent for all the sentimental affection i have for the first one, i would definitely say this is the best in the series. it's fantastic!

i watched both beforehand, one a night, and that was quite nice.

Audience at my showing was laughing hard, but only at things it felt were at Celine's expense. Seemed really weird and nasty and ho-ho-ho-the-silly-french-woman

cuz Jesse is the reasonable one, right

To be honest, I came out of the screening wondering whether Celine might indeed be bipolar, which I didn't even consider of Jesse.

Jesse just doesn't bathe.

I was the only customer in our neighborhood diner two mornings ago, 7am, and in walked Ethan Hawke and his two kids. Very weird to hear that distinctive voice talking to his kids for 1/2 hour. Sounded like a very good parent, by the way. But man, the trucker hat has got to go!

http://www1.pictures.stylebistro.com/gi/Ethan+Hawke+Short+Hairstyles+Spiked+Hair+xRtC_3_yP37l.jpg

oh i'd strongly suggest he keep it on at the moment

at least until the sugar ray biopic wraps or whatever the fuck is going on

I loved Before Midnight, much moreso than I remember feeling about the other two.

Whoa, wtf is going on there? Would've coughed up some turkey bacon had I seen that!

yeesh

shop

that was for his off-B'way Baal thing that got crappy reviews.

Audience at my showing was laughing hard, but only at things it felt were at Celine's expense. Seemed really weird and nasty and ho-ho-ho-the-silly-french-woman

― stet, Wednesday, July 3, 2013 5:35 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

are you mad at the audience for that, or the movie

isn't the fact that Jesse gets to be the funny one kind of a criticism of his character?

best rankings i've ever seen on Metacritic

Positive: 40 out of 41
Mixed: 1
Negative:0

Finally saw this and thought it was fantastic.

Thought it was hilarious that even when you're staying in ultra-romantic Greece, the ultimate getaway for the lazily academic set is an anonymously bland upper-class hotel. Of course they're going to turn on each other, they've been plucked out of their own idealistic surroundings (someone makes a "oh darn we live in Paris" remark) and put into this petri dish. Hawke better than you think - I actually bought it that Jesse missed his son (something that can ring so false in movies). Wonder if Celine had some weird class-struggle element in her repression.

Man, Linklater is a master at filming people walking & talking. I love it when he goes all Euro.

That said, there's a lot of middle-aged wish-fulfillment we haven't seen since the Sopranos. What wouldn't we give to be hooked up with Julie Delpy in Greece with the two most unearthly beautiful twins, bro-ing it up with your dude friends, and being a Really Deep Thoughts type of writer. I bet he would teach this movie trilogy in his stupid writing class.

I'd stick my head in the toaster too.

http://nyrbclassics.tumblr.com/post/56535820218/paddy-leigh-fermor-in-before-midnight

http://media.tumblr.com/771dc012ecebef3e2b6d22be4d02c43e/tumblr_inline_mqifya1zMg1qz4rgp.jpg
http://media.tumblr.com/4b669807da8377344c74f0496dcf9ba5/tumblr_inline_mqig7pFo7j1qz4rgp.png

i wasn't into this much. seemed completely pedestrian and uninspired compared to previous two films. also made me realize that the romantic fantasy element of those films is a big reason why i liked them. obviously there are fantastic or at least aspirational elements in this one too but not in the same sense. felt like a film à thèse, much too self-conscious. for the first time in the series i was conscious that i was watching a kind of rohmer raté.

i laughed a few times i guess.

also the film is not obligated to provide parity but they put some really, really crass and dumb stuff in celine's mouth. obviously there's a case to be made that the dynamics of their marriage echo echo these larger gender-based struggles but she brought this up in a way calculated to make her sound grasping and shrill. which made me wonder if the character is supposed to be flaky or the screenwriters are a little flaky.

i said this about before sunrise upthread:

there's an interesting interplay between the *content* of their talk (what they're talking about) and the *form* (the overall arc of the encounter, what they ultimately want from each other).

i mean, that's very present in all three movies but here in this new one i thought the actual talk felt so overdetermined and freighted with meaning. in the first movie i particular like how their chatter has to bounce off these other people (and places) they encounter. here that aspect felt reduced--more like the two of them were in an empty chamber, hammering out their feelings for one another.

the multifarious voyage to italy references were kind of cheap, too.

Don't be such a bitch.

please do

i'm being too mean, it wasn't bad. i just wasn't excited about it. maybe i'm just a cynical old fart.

or a romantic old fart, whatever.

It's my least favorite of the three. Every time I think I've persuaded myself to give it another chance I remember the dinner scene in Greece.

Doing it w/out the fantasy was one of its many admirable qualities.

Always concious of its Rohmer-esque-ness.

fwiw, I do think that you're onto something w.r.t strictly digging the romanticism of the first two movies -- there's something about the how the change in tone and execution also plays into the change in tone of their relationship

But that only results, for me, in a more fully shaded portrait of what happens to every. single. relationship. ever.

or every one involving Ethan Hawke

I have refused to date Ethan Hawke.

yellow armpit stains on T-shirts

But that only results, for me, in a more fully shaded portrait of what happens to every. single. relationship. ever.

― midnight outdoor nude frolic up north goes south (Eric H.), Saturday, September 7, 2013 10:54 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's assuming i want to see something "real," as opposed to a wish-fulfillment fantasy!

Finally watched Before Midnight..., finally. Friends had told me it was utterly depressing, the worst thing ever, wish they hadn't seen it.
I didn't find it depressing. It was not romantic, I did not want to be Julie Delpy this time but loved it!

I left the Sunrise and Sunset wondering when the characters were going to have serious issues and how they would handle the relationship down the road. The fight scene in this film was what really made the previous two films for me. I could see it again.

that's assuming i want to see something "real," as opposed to a wish-fulfillment fantasy!

Well, yeah, the same in reverse applies to me every time I consider seeing the latest Dardennes movie.

sunrise > midnight > sunset.

Well, the virtue of making her as dreadful as him this time out is that these two deserve each other. All is well.

(Voyage in Italy and Le Rayon Vert references were particularly odious.)

Guy who reviewed it in the WSJ otm:

These are not people who have spent the last nine years together. They're people catching up after nine years. No couple with twin girls and a custody issue would have to tell each other so much. They wouldn't have to tell each other anything. In fact, if they harbored as much resentment as Celine and Jesse, they might not talk at all.

marina abramovic's before sunset

In fact, if they harbored as much resentment as Celine and Jesse, they might not talk at all

wouldn't make for a very interesting movie though would it

I rewatched it a couple weeks ago. Wasn't the first scene -- the airport scene with Jesse and his kid -- awkwardly shot? Def the worst of the three.

amateurist otm: "i thought the actual talk felt so overdetermined and freighted with meaning."

marina abramovic's before sunset

IRL LOL.

that would be an ideal marriage of two cultural con jobs.

"Shouldn't you go to Grandma's funeral so you can fuck your cousins -- that's what people do where you're from, right?" jeez, the two Texans let her do a Tennessee joke instead of a proper "steers and anthills" line.

do not understand the "they wouldn't tell each other so much"/"wouldn't talk at all" criticism at all. it's a movie, it's done for dramatic effect. this is not soviet socialist realist film ffs.

alas

the point is the dialogue is stilted bullshit

well I enjoyed it

Finally saw this -- could have lived without the first 2/3 of the movie, so pretentiously annoying I almost turned it off

I did like the hotel meltdown though. That part at least felt a bit more human to me.

My thing with this movie is that, the first movie you watch 2 people fall in love, the 2nd you get to watch them re-fall in love and then be in love...third movie they give you no reason to even care about watching. like they're hanging their hopes on us enduring a boring car ride and a boring dinner party just becuase it's THEM, it just seemed like it was coming from a place of overinflated ego and it took a while to get past that

What's more presumptuous than expecting there to be a happily-ever-after ending?

The only way there'd be a sequel is 'maybe to address mortality'

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/04/julie-delpy-ethan-hawke-how-we-made-before-sunrise-trilogy-sunset-midnight

My thing with this movie is that, the first movie you watch 2 people fall in love, the 2nd you get to watch them re-fall in love and then be in love...third movie they give you no reason to even care about watching. like they're hanging their hopes on us enduring a boring car ride and a boring dinner party just becuase it's THEM, it just seemed like it was coming from a place of overinflated ego and it took a while to get past that

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, February 27, 2014 12:40 PM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

their chemistry is so undeniable though — the way they know how to push each others buttons, the looks they give each other, the little annoyances that have built up over years of being together, the way their discontent and love for each other just teeters on the edge all the way until the ugly, extremely real unraveling at the end…ah, love! ah, life!

This was a fascinating thread to read through, the different opinions about these films through the years.

I only saw Before Sunrise and didn't like it too much. I think I had read a review that said something like "this shows you can make a film about a man and a woman without sex". So when they started kissing about 15 minutes in, I felt misdirected. Also, neither character had very much intriguing to say.

God I miss Morbz’s movie opinions.

Bloody hell!

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy will reunite one last time for Richard Linklater’s BEFORE I FORGET. In theatres December 13th pic.twitter.com/3KrqTVKaUX

— guy (@guymrdth) July 17, 2022

Which one will have Alzheimer's?

Can't believe everything you read on the internet

maybe they'll do a fourth one eventually but I think they'll miss their one-movie-every-nine-years window

At least we have b4-4

hello i am rewatching the
trilogy

Hawke & Delpy still ridic hot in Before Sunrise can confirm

*bawls*

Delpy & that Nina Simone scene in Sunset still destroys me

i havent re-done Midnight yet, dragging my feet

Delpy & that Nina Simone scene in Sunset still destroys me

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, June 28, 2025 8:45 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

incredible closing scene of course. but for me it’s all about the car ride to her apartment

yesss also great

I've still never watched Before Midnight because I thought Before Sunset ended kind of perfectly — full of possibilities — and I don't need to see any further into those characters' futures.

(but feel free to persuade me otherwise)

I saw all three back-to-back in 2023 (at MoMI at this event) and I came away agreeing that Before Sunset was a perfect end. I don't think Midnight is a bad movie and quite liked it when it originally came out, but it came off as pretty disappointing after seeing them all in quick succession.

i will say that midnight hits a little better the older i get

Before Midnight almost ruined the first two for me, so bad