Before Sunset (2004)

Image credit: Before Sunset: Emilie de la Hosseraye

OKAY, SO I'M A LITTLE LATE... Sunset's Delpy and Hawke

As much as I liked ''Before Sunrise,'' Richard Linklater's lovely 1995 romance in which Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy talked and talked their way through one long night in Vienna, I can't say that I was all that jazzed at the prospect of a sequel. The first movie, in its American-indie-gone-Eric Rohmer way, was a tad precious in its youthful ardor. But now that I've seen Before Sunset, I'm thrilled that Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy decided to team up again. The new film, which unfolds in real time over the course of 80 minutes, is a deeper, darker, altogether more memorable experience. It doesn't extend the characters so much as fulfill them.

Nine years later, the first thing you notice about Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy) is that both are skinnier. Hawke, with thatchy hair and a goatee, has acquired the look of a starving wolf, and Delpy's willowy Gallic allure is now chiseled with neurotic purpose. The two characters, you'll recall, had agreed to meet up six months after their brief encounter, but the rendezvous never happened, and they haven't seen each other since. Jesse, who has written a novel based on the solitary night they spent together, is doing a signing at a Paris bookstore when he first spies Celine. Do the old sparks fly? Yes and no.

As the two wander the city on a sunny afternoon, Linklater's camera tracking them in lyrical extended takes, they're as loquacious as ever, yet the years apart loom like a wall between them. It would trample the emotional delicacy of ''Before Sunset'' to reveal its surprises, but the film's mood is at once cynical, hopeful, and worldly-wise; its exploratory zeal is tempered with the cool air of lowered expectations. The dialogue, which is credited to Linklater and the two actors, has more zing this time, and Hawke and Delpy achieve an inspired balance of wariness, flirtation, and nostalgia. To have grown up and embraced your 30s, it seems, is to understand that a night of talk and love is a beautiful mirage; it's not really life. Or is it?

There isn't a filmmaker at work today more surprising, or romantic, than Richard Linklater, and the final scene of ''Before Sunset,'' set to the great Nina Simone singing ''Just in Time,'' is as blissful as anything I've experienced at the movies this year. I'm jazzed for a sequel already.