Before Sunset: Critic Reviews

A deeper, darker, altogether more memorable experience. It doesn't extend the characters so much as fulfill them.

Though it is sometimes maddening, the movie's prodigious verbiage is also enthralling, precisely because of its casual disregard for the usual imperatives of screenwriting.

It eats at you, just like renewed love.

The incessant jawboning of Before Sunset is all foreplay and no climax.

Before Sunset has an easy, unforced air about it, mostly because of what seems to be a real rapport between the two lead actors.

It's a movie to cheer lovers and movie lovers alike -- an enchanting midsummer cocktail for two, served at dusk on the banks of the Seine.

All one could wish for in a sequel -- it enriches, glosses, and completes the original.

The naturalistic dialogue is a masterful bit of writing.

Hawke and Delpy are credited with writing some of the dialogue, presumably as improvisations. They manage to be both natural and intense, and their characters feel real, even if the situation does not.

If you didn't like Before Sunrise, filmmaker Richard Linklater says, you'll hate Before Sunset. But if you treasured the original, you're sure to prize the 'romance for realists' sequel.

How often does a visual medium make such an elegant argument about the beauty of language, even as it asserts its right to tell a story and move us with its vision?

A small masterpiece.

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are a rare case of two movies that rightfully demand yet another sequel.

Before Sunset is better, perhaps because the characters are older and wiser, perhaps because they have more to lose (or win), and perhaps because Hawke and Delpy wrote the dialogue themselves.

A film of luminous delights.

Having seen Before Sunset twice, and Before Sunrise again in between, I can't say which film is better. Both seem to fulfill an ambition Jean-Luc Godard expressed in the 60s -- to achieve 'the definitive by chance.'

Jesse and Celine come to life again in ways that are sad and beautiful, funny and profound.

A simply amazing film -- touching, sexy, smart, sad and, beyond all, passionate about the value of time and love.

Mr. Linklater and his two creative leads have managed a miraculous transformation of the characters from once-callow lovers into grown-ups teetering on the edge of eternity.

A savvy sequel that should speak to anyone who's let that one great love slip away.

It tells of a love affair so heady it generates goose bumps, yet the story unfolds with such unfailing honesty that its characters become people we know, their actions and words a reflection of our own experiences.

A richer experience than the original.

Allows you to watch two deeply engaged and engaging performers moving verbally through delicately negotiated layers of delight, apprehension, desire and surrender.