After exchanging skittish hellos, they decide to kill some time together before Jesse has to head for the airport to go home. Like the earlier movie, “Before Sunset” turns into an orgy of talk—flirtatious, soulful, boastful, self-deprecating talk, some of it borderline pretentious but all of it utterly convincing as the kind of intelligent and foolish things said by people who connect with each other through their tastes and their passions. “Sunrise” was fresh and easy and ardent. This movie is enchanting, too, but it goes deeper; it’s more direct, with intimations of sharp disappointment and unhappiness. Linklater wrote “Sunset” with help from the two stars, and one of the insights developed in the script is that most of us only get hungrier as we get older—more eager for experience, for emotional danger. Jesse and Celine are still a romantic possibility.

He then mentions a link with Rohmer which I find myself very interesting:

People who long to hear good conversation in American movies often wonder, Where
are the equivalents to an Eric Rohmer movie like “Claire’s Knee”? Well, Linklater, the movie kingpin of Austin, Texas, who earlier made the cult classics “Slacker” and “Dazed and Confused” and, more recently, the commercial hit “School of Rock,” has now created two such films. This one is both more spontaneous than Rohmer’s work and more daring in its technique. “Before
Sunrise” was a night film; Jesse and Celine sampled the miscellaneous pleasures of the street, talking to strangers and performers and whoever else couldn’t get to sleep. The new movie is set in a sunshiny late-afternoon Paris. For long
stretches, the couple walk through the labyrinthine Latin Quarter, with its yellowish-gold walls and tiny shops, and then through the winding paths of an elaborate garden nearby. As they move, the camera calmly recedes before them.
Linklater’s technique is simple and straightforward yet completely successful as a way of inducing the awkward self-revelation that he wants from his actors. Some of the shots seem to last forever, and the lengthy takes allow us to see the moments of hesitation and retreat and lurching breakthrough: when Jesse and Celine reach boundary lines—should they say what they really feel?—they take a deep breath, pause, and abruptly plunge into candor. The drama of the movie emerges from its form: “Before Sunset” plays out in real time. (...)

About the two actors/ characters physical changes:

In the earlier movie, Ethan Hawke had the soft mustache and goatee and flowing hair of a Renaissance poet. After nine years, he’s lost some of his youthful beauty. The hair is clipped; the beard now seems sparse and raffish. Lean and pale, Hawke is only thirty-three, but he’s got the harrowed look of one of those
downtown artists who work and drink too much and sleep too little. As Jesse, he doesn’t give a large-scale performance, but he catches a few small things beautifully. Jesse is still boyish, in the American way, wrestling with how much ego to show. He’s proud of his book but self-mocking at the same time, and he speaks haltingly, and then in spasmodic bursts. We can believe him when he says he doesn’t find writing easy.

Julie Delpy has lost something, too—the look of a golden-haired fairy-tale princess which she had in “Sunrise.” Her features no longer have that plush, rounded softness, but, as she has gained in definition and intensity, she’s become even more attractive.

Delpy was born in Paris, into a show-business family, and she has made films with Godard and Kieslowski, yet she doesn’t project the intimidating self-sufficiency characteristic of so many French actresses. She has spent a lot of time in New York (she graduated from the N.Y.U. film school in 1996), and she
has a partially Americanized sensibility. There’s something tentative and exploratory about her, an eagerness to try out an idea or an attitude, which Linklater tenderly draws on. In both movies, Delpy brings to the deep-dish conversations about life and love a charge of apparent artlessness: she seems to be discovering her emotions as well as her ideas as she goes along, and when she’s abashed by how much she feels she laughs at herself before giving in to emotion once more. From the first moment in the bookstore, Celine is trying to fascinate Jesse all over again, to seduce him with her melancholy, her neurotic difficulties in love. She wants attention from men, she says, but when she gets it she feels like she’s suffocating. What could be a greater come-on to an aesthete like Jesse? The couple are aware that their story is still a fable. “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” are a rare case of two movies that rightfully demand yet another sequel.

Speaking of decisions, whose idea was it to feature Julie's music in Before Sunset? "Actually when Richard and Ethan heard my music they were like 'Okay, we've got to figure out a way to put this in the film,'" laughs Delpy. "I wouldn't impose on them to do something like that."

While Delpy, Hawke, and Linklater convened as far back as 2002 to work on the script for the film, she had actually written and recorded most of the music that would eventually end up on her European album Julie Delpy, which was released overseas in 2003. But when listening to the songs "A Waltz For A Night" and "Ocean Apart" it sounds as if they were written with the film in mind. "No I didn't," admits
Delpy when posed with the question of whether or not she wrote the songs after working with Hawke and Linklater on the Before Sunset script. "We were already
working on the sequel when this song was written, but I didn't think it was meant to be for the film," she continues. "I adapted them a little bit, though. I cut one chunk of the 'Waltz'for this film. It was obvious that I was singing a song about a one night stand that I had something in common with. But I adapted it a little bit to make it sound like [it fit the characters in the film]. It's weird, when I wrote this one night stand song there was a little bit with Before Sunrise in mind, also a little bit of me just writing a song about a one night stand, you know? When I recorded this song, which was a waltz for Jesse, basically. I mean I say the name 'Jesse' in it. I don't know why I wrote it for Jesse, I mean there was another Jesse in my life at that time, but it's just coincidence." Art imitating life imitating art, perhaps? Delpy laughs and
agrees, "Yeah, I think it's a little bit like that. I have a lot of that in my life."

As for the choice of which of Delpy's songs made the final cut of the film? It was a bit of a group choice. "We chose together the song that's in the film, you know 'The Waltz For A Night.' That was obvious it was the right song [for that scene]," explains Delpy. "Then the opening song, it came later. Richard was like 'I really love that song ["An Ocean Apart"]. I would like to figure out a way to put it in.' And then he was like 'Why not use the French song ["Je T'aime Tant"] for the ending credit?' I mean there's very little music in the film apart from what the characters listen to, which is Nina Simone and my music."

Remarkably, Delpy didn't pick up the guitar until rather recently. "I started in November 2000." But her musical leanings actually began much earlier in life. (...)

One of the reasons that Delpy hasn't had as much time to write music as she'd like is because she loves to be involved in various artistic endeavors. "I like to explore so many different things. I'll definitely do another album if somebody wants to put it out. I mean I've had offers, so it's not like [it won't happen]. But I like to take my time, you know? Because I'm doing so many different things it won't happen in the next two months, but it will definitely [happen]. I mean I've already written many more songs and I probably have enough to do another album, but I want to look for certain sounds more and stuff, you know, before I do another one?"

So what did recording an album take away from Delpy? "Well it took away the feeling that I was just writing songs for myself and for no one else," she says. "And now when I'm writing a song I'm like 'I'm writing this for myself' but I'm also thinking 'Oh, maybe it will be on an album.' It's a different feeling. It's not the same
at all. It's sometimes a little bit more intimidating, actually." She pauses for a second before continuing, "But it gave me something else, which is that I've been on tour in Europe and played with a band and understands the concept of playing music with other people. Before this I didn't know that."

Given that she's found herself playing her music in front of live audiences, doe Delpy find the act of performing music to provide more of a connection with people than the acting she commits to film? "No, it's just another medium for me to express my self, you know? I mean I love acting, but with acting you're very dependent on other people's desire. But with writing you're free and with music you're free. Even if no one ever wants to hear my music again, I can still play guitar and write songs, you know? I can play music for the rest of my life."

"Okay, I actually do have a song about my cat, but it's such a hidden song. I mean it's not about my cat, it's for my cat. It's really weird. But I sing it onstage sometimes in Europe. And surprisingly it's the song that has the most success 'cause I go crazy at the end and I think I'm a cat!"