Woman found, lost, then recovered – Before Sunset

I suppose I’ve strung this out long enough. It’s time to bring on the happy ending for this thread.
Sequels are generally disasters artistically, and usually obey the Hollywood principle that if you flog a winning horse long enough, at some point you’ll have to accept it’s dead. Before Sunset is not like this. To say it is as good as Before Sunrise is beside the point. It simply completes that story, and gives it another dimension, that of mature reflection and hard-won acquiescence to the demands of romance. They fully earn their happy ending.

Taken together Sunrise-Sunset let’s us have our cake and eat it too. It just takes 9 years to finish the meal. Sunrise ended with the mature artistic ambivalence about a happy ending. Did they meet up again 6 months later, was the spark still there? How bold, reckless, trusting, or perhaps cynically knowing not to exchange phone numbers or even surnames. The filmmaker was as mature and discerning as the characters were reckless. It’s a beautiful but complex gesture. And it could resonate for the duration of the 9 year hiatus, occasionally surfacing as an unresolved question. A bit like the ‘what might have been’ Jesse evokes as the argument for his impetuous suggestion. Get off the train, or you will never know…

We didn’t know for quite a while. In between life, messy, disorganised life intervened. How was it for us? How many trips on the Ferris wheel of love? How many fallings down to earth? We grow old, we grow old. All of us, viewers and characters alike. We cannot conquer Time.

Time is again the principal theme of Sunset. The ‘before’ indicates that the clock is ticking, with another plane to catch (or not). And sunset, the cinematic shorthand for a happy ending is what they are up against. Will the plane fly West from Paris in pursuit of it, or will they make their sun stand still, and redeem Time? Real time this time. From the first scene at Shakespeare & Company where Jesse is reading from his novel about that one night in Vienna, through their walk and boat trip through Paris, and the endlessly deferred deadline of making that plane, the film intensifies the tension by playing out in real time. A plane to catch, a real-life anxiety we can all share, is but another turn of the screw. This is one plane we are happy to miss.

Not quite the first scene. Cleverly, the film’s opening pays homage to its progenitor. Sunrise ended by revisiting the locations the couple had populated that evening, now empty, and forlorn without their chatter and life. Sunset starts by viewing the empty scenes that will be populated in the film that follows. It underlines the emptiness of the lives Jesse and Celine have been living. Cold, dead years, devoid of romance.

Celine visits the bookshop where Jesse is reading from his novel about that night, and the frozen time starts to melt. Slowly. They have reversed roles. She is more cynical than the dreamy girl of 9 years before. Jesse’s book is ‘very Romantic’, I don’t usually like that’. He assures her that his fictionalised account that had brought their romance up to date originally had a different ending. The couple (them) had originally met up as arranged, spent a few days together and realise there’s nothing there. ‘I prefer that. It’s much more realistic’. But his editor made him change it. ‘Everyone wants to believe in love. It sells’. How true. And so they draw us in, our desires shadowing them round Paris.

So what really happened? He turned up. she didn’t. Her grandmother died, and the funeral was that day. She had no way of contacting him. A tragic irony worthy of Hardy. But it meant Jesse wrote a book, maybe to make sense of it all. If he hadn’t Celine would never have found him again. He wrote her back into his life, and now they can re-write the past. Celine has had a string of relationships, but is happier alone. Jesse is married, with a child, yet his life is devoid of love. It’s quite clear ‘romance’ happened back then, and only then. They have never got over that what might have been.

Another walk through a European city, another re-connection. Not just any city. Paris in late summer. They go to a cafe. They take a river trip – usually for tourists – as the sun slowly sets. In other words, they take a trip on the Tunnel of clichéd Love, and yet still they resist. Or pretend too. ‘Maybe we are only good at brief encounters in European cities’. How will they ever know?

You're going to miss that plane. There’s still time he protests. Time for one last cup of tea at her place - a Boho Parisian appartment to die for - and for Celine to sing one of her own songs. Just a little waltz (which comes from Vienna, of course). ‘I just want another night, another try’, the song ends. And with it the film. "Baby, you ARE going to miss that plane".... "I know." And so the sun sets slowly, fading out to the strains of Nina Simone. He’s not going to board that plane. But the war is over now, sacrifices are no longer demanded for a greater good. They can always have their Paris. Happy ever after (we can hope). They earned it.

(Please Mr Linklater, leave it be there. Don’t revisit it, up-date it, worry over how they are doing. Please don’t feel the urge to pick the scab. It is quite, quite perfect. Let them grow old and happy together beyond the silver screen. Give hope to the hopeless.)