Ray Pride

Celine and Jesse go doting. This week's rare opportunity is to see Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset" in one setting; "Before Sunset," an exquisitely measured miniature, was my favorite movie of 2004 and, as the Film Center puts it, the "Village Voice poll of the hippest film critics" also slated it. While "Sideways" has gotten the greater backlash--a friend who owns a coffeeshop admitted he didn't get why he should care about wine and walked out--I've been surprised by the loathing Linklater's latest confection of gab and light caused in some. Usually when I have a reaction that strong, there's something personal I didn't get that comes clearer months or years later and I wind up liking the object of my original wrath. I haven't seen "Before Sunrise" since it came out in 1995, and its study of distances and intimacies struck personal chords at the time. "Before Sunset" is a different set of riches: a movie about memory, loss, hope, fear, longing, the possibility that language is merely gesture, and in its most incautious spew can tell others more than the most formulated sentiment ever could. "Sunrise"? Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are so young. "Sunset"? They remember being young. Do they remember those young faces, Jesse and Celine, looking in morning's mirror? Hawke seems crazy-proud of his misaligned teeth, his skinny-sunken cheekbones, and Delpy's slightly lined and softened face is a marvel of maturity. Together with Linklater, their script leads to a moment similar to that which ends "Sideways," but where that movie's final shot suggests hope, a first step out of muck and mire, the last moments of "Before Sunset" are a fait accompli, redolent, not suggestive, an emotional striptease, an instance as delicate as blowing dandelion fluff from the palm of your hand, as solid as a hand on your cheek before a kiss. "Oooh, baby..."

"Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset" team up starting Friday at the Siskel Film Center.

(2005-02-01)

Also by Ray Pride

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There are elegant visions in the ruins
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The heart is a lonely reader
Shainee Gaibel's endearing "A Love Song for Bobby Long" is several things, but memorable mostly for being a shamelessly overstuffed, lingo-laden slice of Southern chitchat, zinging with literary citations and bibulous banter
(2005-01-25)

Tip of the Week
Oscar-winning documentarian Jessica Yu spent five years, off and on, working on her latest labor of love, "In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger."
(2005-01-18)

Morpheus descending
John Carpenter's 1976 "Assault on Precinct 13" is one of the grubbier movies to be beloved by a couple generations of film fanatics
(2005-01-18)

Nixon Antagonistes
(2005-01-11)

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(2005-01-11)

Tip of the Week
(2005-01-04)

Predator vs. alien
(2005-01-04)

Big mack
(2005-01-03)

DVD Tips
(2005-01-03)

Tip of the Week
(2004-12-21)

DVD Tips
(2004-12-21)

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