Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

Before

Lee Daniels' photography is masterfully subtle, going well beyond bursts of backlight and daring to pore into the very contours of the couple's faces. Ethan Hawke only fingers the crease above his nose (an unexpected the man, did after all, co-wrote the script), but who will permit a cinematographer to reveal his forehead's wrinkles along with his bony cheeks.

In Sunrise, Hawke proposes an idea about a public access channel that devotes 24 hours chronicling a single person. By Sunset, Hawke's talking about writing a book in the form of a three-minute pop song. Sunrise ended with a montage of the locations that Hawke and Delpy visited. Sunset begins with a montage of the locations that the two will visit. Sunrise takes place over a time period ranging anywhere from 12-24 hours. Sunset, as if to match the urgencies and neuroses of its characters, is filmed in real time.

And there are the unexpected details, such as the revelation that the couple had sex not once, but twice. The moment shocks us because Linklater is the rare director who dares to let us in on the intimacies of the conversation, but who fades out (in both films) during the more private moments.

The mad thirtysomething urgency is captured well by the suggestion that Jesse and Celine might have seen each other when Jesse met in New York.