Claire is...

FILM 1595: BEFORE SUNSET

TRIVIA: The longest take is about 11 minutes long.

The man and woman that Celine speaks to in the courtyard of her apartment are played by Julie Delpy's real parents, Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet.

Though this movie was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, the screenplay is not based upon any existing text. However, the Academy rule book says that all sequels are adaptations.

Julie Delpy wrote and performed three songs for the soundtrack.

Since the film takes place during the mid-late afternoon, it was the only time of day director Richard Linklater would shoot the scenes in the film. He felt it added to the hyper reality of the film, and often relied on the actors to get perfect takes at the right time.

Shooting took a mere 15 days.

The film is notable for essentially taking place in real time, i.e. the time elapsed in the story is the run time of the film. In the fast-changing temperate Paris climate, this created challenges for the cinematographer Lee Daniel to match the colour and intensity of the skies and ambient light from scene to scene. The scenes were mostly shot in sequence, as they were still developing the screenplay.

In the movie, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) confesses to Celine (Julie Delpy) that he wrote a book about their meeting 9 years before, partially in the hope that she would read it, and re-establish contact with him. Like Before Sunrise (1995), this is based on events in director Richard Linklater's own life. He had once spent a night walking and talking around Philadelphia with a woman called Amy in 1989. Though they initially stayed in touch over the telephone, they lost contact eventually. In 1994, Linklater shot Before Sunrise (1995), based on his night with Amy. Like Jesse in "Before Sunset", Linklater was secretly hoping that Amy had heard of the movie, and would show up at the premiere, but she did not. When "Before Sunset" was released, she did not show up either. It wasn't until 2010, before Linklater started production on the second sequel, Before Midnight (2013), that a friend of Amy, who knew about their story, contacted Linklater to tell him that Amy had died in a motorcycle accident on May 9, 1994, at the age of 24, a few weeks before he started shooting Before Sunrise (1995).