Classic Movie Review: 'Before Sunrise' at 30

Before Sunrise

Directed by Richard Linklater

Written by Richard Linklater, Kim Krizan

Starring Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Released January 19th 1995 at the Sundance Film Festival

Published January 18th, 1995

On a train traveling through Europe, two twenty-somethings meet by chance and spend one romantic night in Vienna together. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) is an American who came to Europe to see his girlfriend and ends up heartbroken and wandering. Celine (Julie Delpy) is a French college student headed home from Budapest after visiting relatives.

Jesse and Celine bond over their mutual distaste with a couple loudly fighting loudly in indecipherable German. They decide to hang out together in the dining car and what begins as a time-killing conversation becomes a series of smart, witty exchanges and real honest romance. Jesse has to get off in Vienna to catch a plane the next morning, she is supposed to just go straight home but Jesse's charm tempts her enough to jump off the train for one romantic night in Vienna.

A more Hollywood style romance would fly off the rails at this point, adding mobsters, thieves or something supernatural to the plot in order to give the characters something more to do than just walk and talk. Writer-Director Richard Linklater is more confident in his writing, and especially his dialogue, to need any Hollywoodized plot devices. His dialogue and his two amazing actors are all the devices he needs.

As Jesse and Celine laconically wander the streets of Vienna, their conversations twist and turn through such diverse topics as reincarnation (they both believe but Jesse has a unique theory), Feminism (Celine believes it may be a conspiracy to get woman to act more like men so they will have sex more), and the inevitable discussion of each other’s pasts which they handle in part with fake phone calls to best friends, you need to see it for yourself to get it.

The conversations border on cuteness but the two actors are good at steering away from anything that might be considered cloying. Julie Delpy was a revelation in Before Sunrise. She looks like your classic French ingenue, the type of shrinking violet that could be blown away by a stiff wind. She changes that right from the start by jumping right into the heavy conversation with the sardonic and clever Hawke and matching him word for clever word. She also curses like a sailor, but an unbelievably sexy French sailor.

What a wonderfully romantic idea. Meeting a stranger on a train and falling in love in some far out foreign locale for only one night. I have always thought it would be amazing to go Europe with a backpack full of books and a laptop of my own writing and just wander until I find my muse. Before Sunrise allowed me to lose myself in that fantasy with two characters whose wit, intelligence and romance could be just the inspiration I would need.

The sequel, Before Sunset was released in theaters in July 2004 and was equally witty, smart, romantic and irresistible. And then in 2013 Linklater, Hawke and Delpy upped the ante by joining Jesse and Celine in a seemingly declining marriage. Before Midnight examines what happens when the romance becomes routine and loses that special quality that is hard to get back. It has to be reimagined and worked at. It’s a brilliant film that manages to be sexy, sad, funny, and heartbreaking all while giving us every chance to believe that Celine and Jesse can find a way to get the magic back.

I Feel as if the Before franchise was made just for me. It’s everything I’ve ever felt about what a relationship should be. Intimate conversations that matter, genuine vulnerability, and two people with chemistry to spare. Warmth, humor, connection, sex, it’s all there but it doesn’t feel entirely unreal. It’s perhaps idealized but it’s not a fairy tale. It has complexity and humanity. Jesse and Celine feel real to me in ways that rom-com characters never have or will. Jesse and Celine aren’t pawns being moved around a board. Their humor comes so naturally, as does their romance, and I simply cannot get enough of it.

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