Film Review

Fifteen yeards ago Director Richard Linklater and actors Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke explored the romance between two young people on a single night in Europe. This film revisits the couple may years later when their lives have gone separate ways.

Hawke's character is now a successful novelist on a european book tour promoting his book which tells the story of a one-night romance many years ago. Delpy shows up at a bookstore in Pairs and the two spend Hawke's remaining hours in Paris walking, talking and feeling out each other for signs of love still flaming.

This is not a fast-moving film by any stretch of the imagination and it helps to have seen the first one to put the dialog in context. Paris is the third character in a film that otherwise focuses quite simply on the two central characters, it makes a nice backdrop-and it is the unseen Paris of backalleys and gardens rather than the tourist hospspots.

There is a bit of existential blabber and some love-history talking and the first half of the film moves at a snail's pace and is largley uninteresting. Funnily enough it is when the film moves inside, to the back of a car that emotional depth and content begin to emerge. Delpy comes alive as she recounts her somewhat disatrous love life and expresses anger, or resentment at Hawke which in turn helps them both to move their conversations past the awkwardness of chance meeting and catch-up. Just when it seems to get rolling the film ends and it ends abruptly as though all involved had run out of things to say and ways to continue the conversation in an interesting way for the screen.

Delpy and Hawke, who both had a hand in the writing, are earnest and sincere and attempt to infuse their characters with enough depth and colour to keep things interesting, ad Paris always makes a good backdrop.