Seen: Before Sunrise/Before Sunset

In preparation for the release of Before Midnight, the final film in the Before- trilogy, The Boy and I spent Sunday afternoon at our local indie cinema, watching a double bill of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset.

I'm a massive Richard Linklater fan (Dazed & Confused!  School Of Rock!  What's not to love?!) and adore the Before... films, but it was The Boy's first viewing of them.  I was a little nervous - what if he didn't like them? - but of course he loved them too and, even better, agrees with me that the second one is the best.

For the uninitiated, Before Sunrise introduces Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), two students who meet on a train to Vienna and spend one wonderful night together wandering the streets, before parting with an agreement to meet up in six months time.  In Before Sunset, the two are reunited nine years later at a book reading that Jesse is giving in Paris.  It's a funnier, sadder film about lost opportunities and the small disappointments of growing older. 

Watching the two films (made, and set, nine years apart) back-to-back as a double bill gave a whole new perspective to Jesse and Celine's love story - the heartbreak they felt at not meeting up as planned was intensified having just watched them fall in love - and I now can't wait to see Before Midnight, which finds the two, another nine years down the line, married (yay!) and on holiday in Greece.