Movie Review – Before Sunset

The Right Moment

With some movies you’ve to wait for the right moment to watch them, like a Sunday evening, a Saturday afternoon, before the rains etc. but with certain movies, the moment you watch becomes the right moment. Before Sunset is one such movie. Thinking back I think I watched it at the right moment, before the sun set but not in a way I wanted to have watched it, I rather watched in a tiny mobile screen.

The movie has the idealest of the opening sequences ever, it didn’t occur to me until my friend told me about ‘what more could one want in life’ kind of opening sequence. An author writing his personal story, who had got successful with it, the girl in the story seeing him as an author first, person next, the author knowing that the girl has seen him as an author first, person next. That could be the single awesome moment everyone would want. All of it didn’t occur to me while I was writing Neha but now thinking it feels it’d have been awesome. What’s best is he gives an explanation about the things he write, that’s exactly what I gave even before I had watched the movie, that I don’t live amongst guns and bombs so I can’t write about the same. I can write with honesty only about things I have experienced, how my life revolves.

Jesse and Celine meet again. Oh how happy it feels to write this sentence. Jessie sees Celine seeing her once, twice, thrice and then goes and meets her. The first time even we feel it’s a hallucination, only that it’s not, it’s the same with him as well. The long meet after the wrong thing they did isn’t depressing, isn’t dejecting, isn’t the aromalae moment that we usually associate with love failure couples, isn’t the moment like Autograph where Cheran meets Malliga with two kids and feels sad about her state on outside and happy inside embracing his chauvinism. But here is a meet of two adults which are normal under any circumstance after having anything but normal outing on first go. Beauty.

They set off for a walk, the best thing they know to do, before his flight. I was sad throughout the movie, as it was my second time viewing, as I knew what was the climax but I think I’d have been sad even if I had been watching it for the first time because they are so perfect they just can’t be together. The feelings of missing them after the movie is more than the feeling of one going away from each other. Because we never know when they’ll be back. May be they never will but they will, right.

The first time I watched Before Sunset was on a tiring Friday night, just to complete the series. I was so damn tired I couldn’t enjoy the movie at all but somehow I could remember the feel.

The first question Celine asks his whether Jessie arrived that day, the first question we all have. We buy to what Jessie says first but when we know the truth we feel horrible like how Celine feels. The expressions are the same but she had got a bit older. The first time I watched her in Before Sunset she looked old and unattractive but now I liked her, there wasn’t much difference, probably because I had gotten old too. Or because I had watched Before Midnight too where she had the same expressions with an even older face.

This time they come to the point quickly, they don’t have to have pass on with the initial decency or a phase where they have impress each other. Both are impressed as much as we are impressed with them. So they come to the point. It gets sexual within moments. Celine initiates it. I had a dream the other night where I was asking the leads and Linklater on who’s the hornier of the two. His reply was, in my style, imagine him talking like how I do, “If romantic I can out rightly say its Celine, but horny, both are horny, but to be really specific, it’d be Celine.” Jessie and Celine on the podium have a fight but everyone claps and agrees to his point. A horny romantic girl she is.

I was called ‘a cheeky pervert’ in one of the comments by someone for describing Aditi Rao’s waist in Saratu Vandiyila song in my review of Kaatru Veliyidai. I hope that person doesn’t watch Celine talking and end up calling her something. Or maybe he’d call me a ‘cheeky bastard’ this time for the above paragraph as it’d be considered a taboo, what I said above. Funny people.

The way they talk taboo are the best.

Celine, “Do I look any different”

Jessie, “For that I’ve to see you naked”

Could there be a better teaser moment.

But it’s not only sex, even when Celine describes her work and about environment, it’s as interesting as she describing her feelings. That’s the success.  In fact the distinct difference between Before Sunrise and Before Sunset would be the transition from love to sex. They’re matured individuals, no one wants a-kneel-down-and-propose scene, they both know it hurts, I mean the knee. So why bother when you know what you’re going to do next. I’m not meaning to insult them or sex, the paragraph was written in a way so it’d be catchy but the point is the fuzz over love, that’s done and dusted by this time.

I think it’s the scene in car where Celine talks gets hyper, where Jessie gets sad, that’s where it got me, I was fine till then. But car scene was too emotional. It did as much as what the car scene in Uttama Villain did to me. No words are enough to appreciate Linklaters screenplay. You don’t even have to imagine being a Celine or Jessie to know how it’d have felt. Just watching them and seeing the oh-wow phase in book store to casual addressing while walking to sharing cigarettes in coffee shop to trying-to-get-intimate phase in the park to the getting closer in the boat to becoming sad in car to there-is-nothing-other-than-goodbye-to-say phase while dropping her. It’s all so beautiful. This is one of the movies where you’ll become even sadder when you already know how it’s going to end. The last few minutes from car to her apartment were really tough. And if it was the music room scene in Before Sunrise, it was the stairs scene in Before Sunset.

Sometimes even while writing I feel how well I’m writing. It’s one of those articles. That’s what an afternoon nap can do to you. A world of good. I thought of writing this before lunch but I’m sure I couldn’t have done justice to such a great movie like this. Proud of me.