About.com Rating

In Richard Linklater's sequel to "Before Sunrise," Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise the roles of Jessie and Celine, meeting again for the first time since a seemingly magical one night stand in Vienna nine years ago. Their reunion, literally, is a dream come true; Celine appears at the bookstore where Jessie reads from his first novel, which not coincidentally is based on the train trip where they first met.

What if, Jessie muses, as they walk through the streets of Paris, he wrote the book for the sole reason that Celine might read it and find him again? "Before Sunset" is an unabashedly romantic film with an ending so perfect it took my breath away.

Jessie has only a few hours in Paris before he must catch a flight back home. In the brief time they have together, Celine and Jessie talk without cease, wildly making up for lost time. They discuss their careers, their love lives, their youthful idealism, their adult lack of hope, the state of the world, and the painfully persistent question: what if? Jesse and Celine fluidly move through the city, walking cobblestone streets, sitting in a typical Parisian café, passing through a lovely garden, and wandering down to the banks of the Seine, where they ride a tourist boat, Notre Dame luminous in the backdrop. The conversation never stops, but the talk is never dull.

Unlike "Before Sunrise," which covered fourteen hours, "Before Sunset" takes place in real time.

Celine and Jessie frequently allude to the flight he must catch, and as they walk and talk, I, too, couldn't help but worry about the minutes dwindling away, the plane that must be caught, and when Jessie continues to steal extra minutes, the tension increases. Linklater did a marvelous job of investing the talky premise with suspense.

Delpy and Hawke co-wrote the script with the director. Jessie and Celine are characters they know well, inhabit fully, and their conversations (probably based on their own experiences) feel both spontaneous and true. The grown-up lovers are intelligent and politically aware -- a successful novelist and an environmental activist, after all -- and if they are perhaps more beautiful than most, they are extremely appealing and heart-breakingly real.