Before Sunset

I knew I would like this one better. I mean, you drop in on these two 9 years later, you're going to expect that they've matured. First 15 minutes, blammo, they're already discussing the shape of the world, their careers, their relationships, and skirting around issues of whether they're happy or not with the life they've chosen. Ethan Hawke sums up the picture with one phrase early on -- "If we didn't suffer, we wouldn't learn a thing." Obviously, this resonates for me because I'm of the age that I viscerally know what it means. For 20- somethings, they may not get the meaning in everything that's being said and unsaid. But the tale of romance re-visited and re-vised is something fundamentally universal. So thank goodness that someone like Richard Linklater (and Julie Delpy and Hawke as co- screenwriters) put it on film for all of us to see and recognize as our own. For some strange reason it makes you feel better. It's nice to know others feel the same way; it makes us feel a little less alone.

year: 2004
length: 80 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381681/combined