An old-fashioned vision of love's young dream

Some films are popcorn for the eyes, while others provide something to ruminate on for days. After Richard Linklater's film, Before Sunset, my husband and I spent a few hours revisiting our own romantic history. I suspect we are not alone in that.

Before the cinema emptied, I noticed a young couple. She had her face buried against his shoulder and she was crying. He was trying, rather haplessly, to comfort her. Another older couple were sitting, arms around each other's ample waists, and their bond of affection and ease was palpable.

So what inspired such different reactions? Before Sunset is that rare thing in the world of independent movies, a sequel. The first film, Before Sunrise, featured two twentysomethings who meet by chance on a train.

Jesse, played by Ethan Hawke, is spending his last night in Europe on a Eurorail trip before returning to the United States, while Céline, played by Julie Delpy, is en route to study at the Sorbonne.

Jesse persuades her to disembark in Vienna, and they spend a magical 14 hours together, walking and pouring out their hearts to each other. They do not exchange addresses or telephone numbers, but promise to meet in Vienna in six months' time.

The film ends on a note of tantalising ambiguity, as we do not know if they will ever meet again.

Hawke, Delpy and the director, Linklater, were in regular contact and in 2002 they decided to do a sequel, with Delpy and Hawke writing most of the dialogue. Jesse is nine years older and married with one child. He has written a bestseller, based on his night in Vienna with Céline, who we rapidly realise he has never seen since.

He is in Paris on the last day of a book promotion tour, fielding questions from journalists after a reading in a bookstore, when he looks up and sees her.

The pair have a very short time together before he has to catch a plane and, once again, they talk intensely, while drinking coffee, walking and finally taking a bateau mouche down the Seine.

I suspect that both films will appeal most to people of a certain age. It was a time when it was just plausible that no contact at all for six months would have been preferable to the vagaries of letters crossing in the post.

If Jesse and Céline met today, they would have been texting each other before they parted at all and e-mailing every day after. And it would have been a great deal less romantic.

But then, it depends on your notion of romance. The tension in Before Sunset revolves around whether their connection, a word much favoured in this film, is still as strong and whether they will end up together this time.

Once again, the ending is ambiguous. I have been fascinated while reading reviews by how many critics confess to being romantics and express a hope that Jesse and Céline will be together for ever.

Not one review I have read so far mentions the consequences for Jesse's adored son, little four-year-old Hank, much less Jesse's unnamed and blameless wife.

He married her when she became pregnant, after an on-again off-again college relationship.

Their marriage has become increasing empty since the birth of their son. Céline has had other lovers and now lives with a war photographer who is often away.

In the first film the pair are looking forward, dreaming dreams. In the second, they have lived enough to know that life can involve wrong turnings. Jesse probably should never have married his wife or indeed made her pregnant.

However, he has done both, and there is a four-year-old boy longing for his return. This makes the relationship infinitely more complex, because he "does not want to miss a minute of his son's life".

As researcher Judith Wallerstein has pointed out rather brutally, children do not care if their parents are happy or not, so long as they are together and loving the child.

This story is no longer just about finding and keeping a soulmate. To stay with Céline, he has to break a vow and accept that he will not be there all the time for his son.

It is not surprising that the critics barely advert to this aspect of the film. Divorce is a commonplace for the generation represented by Jesse and Céline.

Ironically, at a time when divorce is so prevalent, more and more is expected of a relationship. If Jesse chooses Céline, he will have done so on the strength of less than a day's acquaintance, when both are at their very best.

Both Delpy and Linklater are at pains to say what a strong character Céline is, that she is not just a male fantasy. I beg to differ. She is a left-wing male fantasy. She is beautiful. (Try finding a review in which the words "radiant" or "luminous" do not feature.)

She speaks about sex with graphic frankness. She has all the right opinions, works as an environmental activist and worries about the imperialist US. Her only flaw may be that she never shuts up. The concept of comfortable silence is alien to Céline.

Is the obvious attraction and connection they feel for each other enough to sustain a relationship in the long term, much less a justification for leaving a wife and small child?

There is something adolescent about Céline and Jesse, even as thirty-somethings.

I suspect that what all those romantic critics really want is for Céline and Jesse to wander, for ever young and beautiful, wrapped in intense discussion, against the backdrop of strangely empty European cities.

This film is really a rather old-fashioned vision of love, where finding Prince Charming trumps all other concerns, including in this case a marriage and child.

There is little room for a love that grows and endures through sleepless nights with colicky babies, through the waning and return of desire, through waistlines thickening and hair greying.

Which vision of love is more viable? Is Céline's and Jesse's "connection" really enough to gamble everything for? Go see this enchanting film with someone you think you love and see what happens.

bobrien@irish-times.ie