Before Sunrise

UK Release Date. 20 April 1995
Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 41 mins
Director. Richard Linklater.  
Cast. Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke.
Rating. 74%

Review.

Before Sunrise opens on a train from Budapest to Paris, where almost immediately, American twenty-something Jesse (Ethan Hawke) strikes up a conversation with French student Céline (Julie Delpy). After a brief, and seemingly inconsequential, exchange Jesse prepares to get off at his stop, Vienna, but sensing some kind of connection, he convinces Céline to spend the evening (and early morning) with him until his flight leaves the following morning.

In the hour and a half that follow, we watch as Jesse and Céline meander around Vienna, talking about everything from art to gender roles. Nothing of note really happens, but as they walk around the city, the two develop a unique bond seemingly losing themselves in one night of euphoric bliss. 

But Jesse must leave to board his plane back to the US, and Céline must return to her university studies in Paris, so they make a deal to meet six months later in Vienna, in that exact same spot. 

The young, attractive, and wide-eyed Hawke and Delpy successfully capture the earnestness, thrill and unbridled excitement of young love. By and large, the blossoming relationship feels real and honest, there is an innate natural chemistry between the two. The majority of the dialogue is well-written, but some exchanges border on pretentious. Do confident, intelligent and cosmopolitan twenty-somethings like Jesse and Céline really exist in the real world? In particular, I repeatedly questioned how much I sympathised with Hawke’s character, Jesse, throughout the film. At times he feels gratingly insincere, pompous and full of himself. He’s not endearing in the same way that Céline is, and much less interesting as a result. 

Richard Linklater’s direction is impeccable. He directs the film with such subtly and precision that even a record listening session becomes one of the most romantically charged experiences seen in cinema. Very few films capture the purity of love like Before Sunrise does.

At the time of release, little did we realise that Linklater’s heartwarming film would become the first entry in a decade-spanning and generation-defining love story.The film’s conclusion is both simultaneously hopeful and bittersweet, ending on the promise of love without any certainty beyond the here and now.