About a month ago, Universal released a 10th anniversary edition of Reality Bites on DVD. Never has a film tried so hard to be the defining movie of its generation and been so transparent at doing so. Although critics are sometimes unduly harsh in condemning Reality Bites, it's still in no way the film that best captures Generation X, or twentysomethings of any generation.
That movie is Richard Linklater's underrated 1995 masterpiece Before Sunrise, a modest, engaging and insightful film that shares a star (Ethan Hawke) with Reality Bites, but little else. Linklater, the director of such slacker classics as Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, and well, Slacker, tells the simple story of aimless American Jesse (Hawke) and French intellectual Céline (Julie Delpy), who meet on a train and spend one magical day and night in Vienna, falling in love and philosophizing as only self-absorbed twentysomethings can.
Before Sunrise ends perfectly, with the neurotic pair too skittish to commit to the pedestrian practice of exchanging contact information, promising instead to meet in Vienna again six months later. If ever there was a movie that could be utterly ruined by a sequel, this was it.
Yet somehow, nine years later, Linklater, Hawke and Delpy have made not only a worthy sequel, but a film that in many ways surpasses the original and stands as one of the best movies of the year. Like their creators and audience, Jesse and Céline have aged nine years, with Jesse now a novelist and Céline an environmental activist. When Jesse stops in Paris on a book tour, promoting his barely fictionalized account of the couple's one night together, Céline shows up at the bookstore and the couple spend a little more than an hour (the film essentially takes place in real time) catching up before Jesse has to board a plane back to New York.
That simple plot description doesn't do nearly enough justice to the film's complexity, its ability to craft real, heart-rending romance from just a few glances and choice words. Linklater, Hawke and Delpy collaborated on the script, and their personalities blend in with those of Jesse and Céline, no longer the wide-eyed twentysomethings of Sunrise, but weary, somewhat jaded adults who look back on their one special night as a missed opportunity.
Perfectly capturing the regret that can come with maturity, and closing with another impeccably crafted ending, Before Sunset is a jaw-droppingly beautiful and moving film, as defining a moment for its generation as its predecessor.