I’m a big fan of Richard Linklater, a film director who renowned for his signature style of making films. Each of his films requires a lot of ‘time’ and ‘effort’ to make. One of his famous films is the ‘Before’ trilogy.

9 years is the number that each film was parted. Before Sunrise was the first one I watched and felt in love with Vienna ever since. When I finally had a chance to visit there, no surprise how Vienna quickly became my most favourite city in the world. However, my most favourite film of the trilogy is Before Sunset which took place in Paris 9 years later.

 

 

Before Sunset was presenting Jesse and Celine, just like the previous film, the couple were talking and wandering around the city. While the first film was saying about young love, deep emotion, and promises. Its sequence went further than that, it tells how good the two characters are capable of controlling the situations and carefully choosing each word to project their true feelings towards each other.

What amazed me the most is nothing else but obviously the conversations between them and this is how I’m going to do with it here. I’ll put my favourite lines alongside with the film photographs of places I had taken in Paris.

 

 

“Did you show up in Vienna, that December?”
“Uh, did you?”

 

 

“Reading something knowing that the character in the story is based on you… it’s both flattering and disturbing at the same time.”

“How is it disturbing?”

“I don’t know, just… being part of someone else’s memory.
Seeing myself Sunset through your eyes.”

 

 

“I see it in the people that do the real work, and what’s sad in a way is that the people that are the most giving, hardworking, and capable of making this world better, usually don’t have the ego and ambition to be a leader.”

 

 

“You know, I think that book that I wrote, in a way, was like building something.

So that I wouldn’t forget the details of the time that we spent together.
You know, like just a reminder that once we really did meet! You know, that this was real! That this happened!”

 

 

“You want to know why I wrote that stupid book?”
“Why?”

“So that you might come to a reading in Paris and I could walk up to you and ask, “Where the fuck were you?”

 

 

“No – you thought I’d be here today?”
“I’m serious. I think I wrote it, in a way, to try to find you.”

 

 

“What do you think were the chances of us ever meeting again?”

“After that December, I’d say almost zero. But we’re not real anyway, right?
We’re just characters in that old lady’s dream. She’s on her deathbed, fantasizing about her youth. So of course we had to meet again.”

 

 

“You can never replace anyone,
because everyone is made of such beautiful specific details.”

 

 

“Like I remember the way, your beard has a bit of red in it.
And how the sun was making it glow, that morning, right before you left.
I remember that, and I missed it! I’m really crazy, right?”

 

 

“I’m a strong independent woman in my professional life. I don’t need a man to feed me, but I still need a man to love me, and that I could love, you know.”

 

 

“Baby, you are gonna miss that plane.”
“I know.”

 

Jesse and Celine
Before Sunset, 2004

Paris in May, 2014