Before Sunrise (1995)

Jesse from Texas (Ethan Hawke) picks up Céline from Paris (Julie Delpy) on a Eurail train from Budapest. She’s a grad student at the Sorbonne, and he’s an aimless dropout flying home to the US the following morning.

The twenty-somethings connect – at least enough for Jesse to persuade Celine to get off the train and join him for a few hours in Vienna, Austria. “If I turn out to be a psycho, you can bail out,” he says.

They get off the train, see the sights (the Ferris wheel at Prater park is the one Orson Welles rode in The Third Man), share opinions, make out in the grass, fall in love and, 14 hours later, say “auf Wiedersehen”. Get out your handkerchiefs.

Although marketed as a slacker Affair to Remember, it’s actually a sharp, sexy, funny romance with a radical core of intelligence that captures the fever and fleetingness of love. For this, you can thank the beautifully nuanced performances of Hawke and Delpy, who are both terrific.

But mostly you can credit director Richard Linklater, who wrote the sharply observant script with Kim Krizan. He sets the scrappy, seductive temperature of the relationship just right.

Céline tells Jesse that fulfilling “some male fantasy – meet a French girl on a train, fuck her, never see her again and have a great story to tell” – holds no interest.

Linklater couldn’t agree more. He believes that his characters have brains as well as hormones and that it is worth two hours of our time to listen to them talk and observe the ritual of how and why they connect.

Jesse and Céline don’t have cash for the chic attractions of Vienna, so for them, it’s a bar, a dance club, a bottle of wine in the park, a walk by the Danube, and a kiss on the Ferris wheel. Cinematographer Lee Daniel lights their travels with subtle magic, so the city’s history seeps in.

Since Céline has ruled out sex (although Jesse’s still pushing for it), psyches are all that’s left to probe. They can be honest because they’re only a momentary connection. “We die in the morning, right?” asks Jesse with mock bravado.

Céline initiates a dangerous game – don’t try it at home. Each makes an imaginary call to a best friend and describes the other. It’s a revealing scene, rudely hilarious, and the actors play it to wicked perfection.

Delpy (Killing Zoe) is a knockout – luminous and touching. And Hawke (Reality Bites) has never been better, delivering an emotionally courageous performance that uncovers Jesse’s secret heart.

Granted the prestigious opening slot at the Sundance Film Festival, Before Sunrise sneaks up on you the way love sneaks up on Jesse and Céline.

As the two talk about art, poetry, family, sex, God, death and dreams, this little love story becomes a mesmerising one-night microcosm of a lifetime relationship.

After Jesse and Céline say goodbye, the camera returns to the places they visited. It’s a plaintive scene as we look at now-familiar locations, minus the protagonists.

Shot for only $3 million, the film spawned two sequels – Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) – set 9 years and 18 years later, respectively.

Jesse
Ethan Hawke
Céline
Julie Delpy

Director
Richard Linklater