This is simply one of the best movies I've seen, with very few qualifications. Maybe I should say that this is one of the best "simple" movies I've seen. Perhaps it is a bit like cooking, use fresh and quality ingredients and you can make something great without a lot of unnecessary stuff. Unfortunately, Hollywood just doesn't seem to have the ambition to make these type of movies anymore.
In any event, this is one of the few sequels that matches the intensity and integrity of the original. First, it has many simple, yet stylish and honest shots. Perhaps the Scorcese shot is used too much (i.e. following the actors on a long walk without cutting a la Goodfellas kitchen scene), but I don't think so because it makes sense in the context of the movie. Second, many of the shots have interesting emotive effect. For instance, towards the end of the movie, after these "lovers" are fighting the clock (because Ethan Hawke's character needs to catch a flight) and are cruising down the river, they are so engrossed in their conversation and the fact that they are trying to get so much out of the last few minutes they don't notice their ride is coming to an end. However, we the viewer can see what the characters either don't see or don't want to see, that the boat is crossing over the river to its destination and the departure no one wants to deal with. The viewer is given a wonderful sense of dread as the bank approaches in the background, because we know what is going to happen when the ride ends, and like the characters, we don't want it to end either. Even if the film borrows heavily from other great movies (e.g. My Dinner with Andre) it is independent of those influences.
Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke were great per usual. Making the dialogue ring true is difficult, but they pull it off. As before, they completely capture the nature of the intimate and friendly conversational style of friends or lovers that is normally edited out of most movies. When people talk, things are not always sequential or rationale, and unlike most movies this movie doesn't try and correct that. Not for a moment does the audience find themselves thinking that this is some sort of charade and no one would ever talk like that. The dialogue is intelligent and insightful, but that is because the characters are intelligent and have a knack for being brutally honest with their thoughts and feelings.
This is movie excellence, and I'm glad some film makers are still trying to make art. Despite the romantic themes this isn't a date flick, so be prepare to deal with the difficult and often unresolved issues of love and relationships that arise.
