Richard Linklater showed that he can create a stunning and moving romance movie with the 1995 release Before Sunrise. Linklater (Slackers, Dazed and Confused) casts Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy into his lead roles as Jesse and Celine, travelers abroad in Europe. They meet while on the Eurorail on its way to Vienna. There Jesse will fly back to America in the morning and Celine will continue on to Paris where she will study there. The connection between the two is immediate and intense. The conversation seems so natural and full of intriguing ideas. Their conversations range from the characteristics and powers of language to sexuality and reincarnation. Much of the conversation would seem unimportant in other movies but in this one it seems to me some of the most intimate details. Some of the shots seem almost like Linklater is making the audience into a voyeur. There are scenes where Jesse and Celine try hard to not look into each others eyes and another where they try to resist the impulse of touching each other, wary of the budding chemistry between them. When the movie ends it seems too soon for their short romance to end. The last shot leaves you wanting to know whats going to happen with these two, will they ever meet again?

The questions from the end of Before Sunrise are answered in Linklater’s follow up film Before Sunset. The movie picks up 9 years later in Paris. Jesse is there on the last stop of a book tour he has been doing. The tour is to promote the book he wrote about their night in Vienna. He looks up from reading an excerpt and there is Celine standing in the back of the store looking at him. The conversations they had in Before Sunrise pick up right where they left off as they leave the book store and begin to walk around the city. Linklater here shoots the scenes in long takes so the story seems to follow real time. For the most part the conversation focuses on how hard it is to find someone and connect on deeper levels with them rather than the questions that need to be answered like, are they single? are they happy? are they destined to be together? As the conversation unfolds we learn what happened 6 months later in Vienna, that both Jesse and Celine lived in New York City at the same time, (he even thinks that he saw her in a deli once) and that the only reason that he wrote the book was because he thought that he could find her that way. The movie ends the way it should. The walk concludes at sunset in Celine’s apartment and they both know that Jesse isn’t going anywhere as Celine dances to Nina Simone, “Baby, you’re gonna miss that plane,” is all she says.  

Richard Linklater does a remarkable job in creating a love story that doesn’t need to advertise itself with Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. The characters he created in Jesse and Celine and the ability of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy to embrace and become their roles prove that love cannot be bound by time or place, it expands through both of those boundries and connects people and hearts together. The witty conversation and naturalistic actions of the two characters make this movie seem almost documentary like as the audience feels almost as if they’re intruding on very private conversations. These films seem to be on almost every critics Top 100 list and they are surely on mine. Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are a love story told better than any else, coupled with amazing cinematography this film seems to glow almost as much as the eyes of Jesse and Celine as they look longingly at each other in the last scene.

Tags: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Love Story, Nina Simone, Paris, Richard Linklater, Tom McGrath, Vienna

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