Team Experience is citing favorite love scenes. Here's Chris...
Richard Linklater's Before... trilogy is the perfect love story for the hopeless-romantic-turned-cynic in all of us. The romance between Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy giving their flawless best) is the kind of pure human connection that we hope for in adulthood, and only the tiniest bit of the fairy tale we're promised in youth. Each of the series' three chapters were released nine years after its predecessor, with the years in between a surprise for the audience. [more...]
In Before Sunset, the middle chapter of the series, Jesse and Celine meet again in Paris after their post-Sunrise plans to reconnect have long since fallen apart. No longer the optimistic idealists they were when they fell in love in Vienna, they both have become jaded by life's unexpected compromises, especially in love. One of the thrills of the film (staged masterfully in real time) is that they don't just reconnect with eachother, but with a dormant part of themselves that still wants to believe in love.
The film's final moments are among the best and most subtly sexy of the trilogy. Over the course of the film, Jesse has been delaying the trip to the airport to squeeze in more time with Celine before flying back to his doomed marriage. By now, it's all out on the table what the night in Vienna meant to the both of them and Jesse takes a few final moments to come up for tea. Who needs Netflix And Chill when you have Nina Simone?
Though some have strangely called the moment ambiguous, isn't it obvious what comes next? The restraint in not showing the ensuing night of furious lovemaking makes this final moment sexy in ways that so few movies do - it's complete suggestion. However, what lingers longer is the quiet joy and relaxed ease both Jesse and Celine have fallen into now that they are reunited and reconciled, reclaiming something vital. In this love story, even with life's left turns, it was always meant to be.
Our Valentine's Series
A Room With a View (1986)
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
The Painted Veil (2006)
Love Songs (2007)
(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Beyond the Lights (2014)