Before Sunset

I had asked my mom to send me a recent copy of the "Film" magazine just because I used to read every single issue of it when I was back home. I'm not saying it was the greatest information source, but at least it covered a major portion of the Iranian film-related activities. And usually it would focus on a foreign film in each issue and would publish a series of articles related to that - which could be translated from other sources or written by an Iranian critic.


Any way, the issue I received last week, focused on "before sunset"... a movie sequel that was released last year. I watched it on DVD a couple of months ago and really really liked it and decided to write about it so someone else might get interested and go watch it. It was a sequel to a movie from nine years ago, "before sunrise". I never watched the original but have read the reviews and it was apparently a good, sort of independent movie. It was about this American guy (Ethan Hawke) who meets a French girl( Julie Delpy) on a train from Budapest to Vienna. The whole story happens in one night, before the have to part ways to their different destinations. The movie ends as they promise each other that they would meet in Vienna in six months - without giving each other any contact information.

Nine years later this movie comes out which is in fact taking place nine years after the time of the original story. The guy has written a book about their experience and is in Paris, in a book signing session. His flight is in an hour and guess what?... yep, the French girl (more of a woman now) shows up. The rest of the movie is all conversation between these two as they walk the streets of Paris and talk about what happened to them in the past nine years. (I'm not gonna tell you if they actually met up in Vienna or not... you have to watch the movie for that!)...the amazing thing about the movie is how simple and smooth it is. The main feature of the film is that it's "real time", meaning that not even one second is skipped by the movie... so from the second it starts in the bookstore till the final scene, you have spent exactly as much time with the couple as they had with each other. The conversations are very natural... you can picture yourself talking about the same things if you ever meet someone after such a long time. The actors are really really strong... just as a note, they have also been involved in the process of writing the dialogues for the sequel and that's probably why they can play the role so well.

Anyway, I'm not gonna spoil the movie by giving away the ending, so go watch for yourself... it's not a super-long movie - just 80 minutes and as I said it's really smooth and you're gonna like it if you're not looking for a Batman type of movie. Another interesting thig about the movie: "before sunrise" is the movie with the lowest box-office sales in the history of cinema that has had a sequel.

So that was it for your film review session today, stay tuned for more... I wish I could find the time to watch more movies and write about them... it's really fun!