Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before..?

Before Sunrise made it on to our queue for reasons I no longer remember, and is that rarity in which Netflix predicted we would like it ever-so-slightly more than the average Netflixer.  It's a nice little film**, perhaps more special for us because at the time the film is set, the characters are roughly our age, and it was a time when I probably should have gone to spend a long weekend in Vienna with Sarah while she was in France on a Rotary scholarship.  

Still, I would be torn about giving it 4 stars if it weren't for Before Sunset, which is a little sliver of a film (it has a running time of 80 minutes, but 4 minutes are credits; it clocks in like a classic Disney animated movie) that tracks in real time a wonderfully bittersweet exploration of their relationship 9 years after the events of the first movie.  The two movies need each other; the first is a little rough with the lack of polish of youth, while the second shows a mastery of production that comes with full 30-something adulthood while retaining the vigor of youth.

It was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, because the characters are "adapted" from the previous film.  That seems a rather arbitrary way to classify it, when the script is entirely new.  I haven't seen Sideways, so I can't comment on the choice of winner, but I definitely liked the script better than Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which won Best Original Screenplay (though neither were as good as the Incredibles).

I'm actually looking forward to Before Midnight, if not with same anticipation as the Hobbit.  This is a good feeling.

** I don't quite believe that Hawke's character is both so full of hope that he can convince a stranger to spend the day with him in Vienna, and also so deeply cynical.  I think they're trying to paint him as a romantic with a cynical streak (perhaps as a defense mechanism), and they almost-but-not-quite pull this off.