Before Sunset condenses so much into its 80 minutes of real time that the temptation is to just review it in a tumble of breathless pauses, clauses, and run-on sentences. It's the counterpart to Before Sunrise, the passage of time turning Jessie (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) wiser yet somehow not wizened. As a couple, they're skirting what that night in Vienna meant to both of them, struggling to reclaim that feeling of possiblity, before infinite possibility became infinite jest, the wizened voice of experience that lets them savour the moment fighting with the forces of nostalgia, saudade, that makes them know that something has been lost, something ineffable. They now know what they had, all those years ago, was something special - that insouciance of youth, the one that leads you to think that magic moments are dime a dozen, has faded.

Whew. But Before Sunset is that kind of magical movie: simultaneously knowing about the effects of the passage of time and yet optimistic. Jessie and Celine meet at a book reading in Paris, 9 years on, long after they missed their scheduled meeting in Vienna. This time, they've settled down - Jessie with a wife and kid, Celine in a long-distance relationship. Yet while they're possessed of a practical approach towards unhappy relationships and the responsibilities of life, that one night in Vienna remains as a lodestone, a pointer to potential happiness amid the death of a thousand cuts.

In a sense, Before Sunset reminds me of the majesterial love of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza in Love in the Time of Cholera. It's fiercely optimistic about love, despite great separations of time and space, yet bittersweet and realistic. It's the self-knowledge that puts this a cut above any standard rom-com about "one magical meeting". You watch Serendipity and you go, "well, yes, they were nice together but will they sustain a relationship together in the long run? How would I know, since they hardly ever interact in the movie?" In Before Sunset, all such questions are anticipated and answered. Jessie and Celine know they could be asking for too much in banking on this past chance meeting, and wonder whether it's realistic to constantly think of that one day instead of looking at the practicalities of life. And yet they know something inside is dying, needs resuscitation.