Before Sunset

Finally, Friday night, enjoying the temporary health (as on Saturday morning I got tempratures again), after working until late at the office (good thing I had company :)) . After reaching home, I stayed up to watch the sequel (conclusion?) of Before Sunrise, which is Before Sunset, set 9 years after Jesse and Celine's first encounter.

Taking the same concept of natural conversation, the time frame is even shorter, from the end of Jesse's book tour visit to a local bookstore in Paris, to about the time he has to go to the airport and go back to his home. From the conversations, we see how the years have changed both somehow, how adolescent ideas have either become mature principles or simply pushed aside, how they remembered their first encounter and what it meant... with long shots taken with them just walking around Paris. It's really like two real friends, in real life, meet, and the cameras just happen to be there. Their situation borders on the believable with almost a dream fantasy, making us still yearn for such a connection, such a relationship, even when they have changed so much (or so little, in fact).
The end leaves so much to be imagined (or not), as the last scene leaves a happy if ambiguous uptone. And so, we are left yet again with the desire to have such a connection within our lives. So cruelly similar, that we could identify with it, but also so far away at the same time.