Before Sunset

Richard Linklater’s film runs in real time: the hours passing in the story are the hours you sit there. Cutting ahead would break that, so the long takes are a requirement, not a flourish. Shooting took 15 days in Paris, always in real places including the Shakespeare and Company bookshop and the Marais, and since midday was unusable the schedule was squeezed around the light. Linklater told Filmmaker Magazine the three of them wrote the script over a year of emails and faxes, with him compiling. In the same piece he says a ten page scene left them roughly two hours, ten takes at most, and that almost nothing was cut. He named Jim McConkey, who carried the Steadicam, the crew’s most valuable player. The Academy nominated it for adapted screenplay, crediting Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke with the script and Linklater and Kim Krizan with the story; the award went to Paul Haggis for Million Dollar Baby. Delpy wrote two songs used in the film, and a third plays over the closing credits. A good fit if you enjoy noticing a scene carried end to end by two actors with no cut to rescue them. Not for you if you want to be told whether Jesse makes the plane; the film stops right there without answering.