When
we met Celine (Julie Delpy), a young French woman, and Jesse (Ethan
Hawke) a young American, in 1995 ‘s “Before Sunrise” we met a young
couple who spent a night in Vienna walking and talking to and about each
other just after meeting on a train. Nine years later in “Before
Sunset” Jesse, now a married man, has written a best selling book about
that evening with Celine, and is in Paris on a book tour. They had lost
contact with each other and now 9 years later Celine comes to the
Parisian  bookstore where he is making an appearance, and Jesse doesn’t
make the plane he was suppose to leave on and they spend the day and
evening walking and talking in Paris. We learn that he is now married
and has a son while she is an environmentalist with a boyfriend she
doesn’t see very often. The ending is ambiguous and there wasn’t talk of
a third film.

This
film in the series opens with Jesse taking his son Hank to the airport
after the latter spent the summer with Jesse, Celine and their twin
daughters. It has been 18 years since they first met and are now a
couple living together, Jesse having divorced his wife, continued his
career as a writer while Celine is being tempted by a job which she
thinks she could get involved in. Jesse is thinking about he and Celine
returning to America so he could be closer to his son but hasn’t
discussed it with her yet.

There
are three outstanding scenes that will stay with you with the first
being when Celine and Jesse are at a dinner, given by the host of the
writer’s retreat that they had spent the summer, and their friends. The
talk among the six touches a bit on the couple’s problems but what lies
underneath comes out later. One of the couples, as a present, leased a
hotel room and a massage for two and volunteered to sit the twins. The
second outstanding scene is the walk through town that  Jesse and Celine
take to the hotel. It is the scene that evening in the hotel where
they, especially Celine, go at each other that makes the film. It is the
accumulation of their life together and what makes it work and what is
pulling it apart.

In
this chapter in the story Ethan Hawke shines like he has never in any
other picture including the two prequels to “Before Midnight”. Whereas
Julie Delpy seemed to be the center of the Sunrise and Sunset movies
Hawke walks away with this one though each gets equal time and Delpy
spends time exposing her breasts in the most natural way.

The
director Richard Linklater, who also wrote the screenplay with Hawke
and Delpy, draws us into the film, let’s us see that the couple really
love each other but have problems as most couples do. The Greek
Peloponnese peninsula  looks as romantic as it should be adding to the
feel of the movie. Will there be a fourth film in 2022 so we can see if
this couple will live happily ever after or?