A tale of new romance devoid of artifice

Originally published January 27, 1995

Jesse, a young American with a hipster mustache and a fuzz of beard on his chin, is knocking around Europe on the trains. Celine, a Paris graduate student with the features of a Botticelli waif, is returning home from Budapest. The strangers, rattling past picture-perfect villages en route to Vienna, strike up a conversation. Among the things they impart in the early scenes of Richard Linklater's serenely low-key Before Sunrise is Jesse's idea of a year-long cable-access film in which 365 people would each be photographed over a 24-hour period. He envisions this real-time documentary as a celebration of the "poetry of day-to-day life." Celine, radiating sly amusement, sees it as something else: boring.

I am certain there will be people who feel the same way about Before Sunrise, a talky, two-character (plus a few oddball bit players) romance in which a man and a woman meet, detrain in Vienna and spend 14 perambulating hours in the Austrian capital, stopping in bars and cafes, playing pinball and riding a Ferris wheel, wandering the banks of the Danube and clinching in the shadows of a deserted park. But one person's tedium is another's bliss. Nothing much happens, and yet everything happens.

Linklater, the writer-director of the seminally quirky Slacker and the celebratory chronicle of '70s high schoolers, Dazed and Confused, has accomplished the remarkable. Along with co-writer Kim Krizan and his two marvelously attuned stars, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, the filmmaker has created a loping, light-headed document of twentysomething love. In a graceful, offhand style, Before Sunrise captures the swooning intensity of new romance with no glint of artifice. It traces the way people, strongly attracted to one another, meet, maneuver and share thoughts and experiences both banal and beautiful.

The success of a movie like this, in which the camera remains almost exclusively locked on its two subjects, hinges on its performances. The rapport, the relaxed give-and-take, the intelligence Hawke and Delpy convey, are essential to the success of Before Sunrise. And after spending a Viennese summer night with this pair, it's impossible to imagine others in their roles. In his casting, Linklater has struck gold. Hawke, who brooded his way through Reality Bites, lightens up and kicks back here. His Jesse is a smart, agreeably funny Yankee slacker (we never do find out exactly what he does, or where he lives), a guy who can ponder cosmic stuff like reincarnation but can just as easily throw an adolescent fit. He can be eloquent, but also inarticulate ("love, I dunno, you know"). At one point during their nocturnal ramble, he even gives Delpy's character a little shove - a clumsy sign of affection straight out of junior high.

Delpy, who had the title role in Killing Zoe and starred in White, the middle piece of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy, plays a student at the Sorbonne. She's perceptive, witty, the daughter of liberal-thinking Parisian professionals. As the train pulls into Vienna, Jesse blurts his proposition: that Celine postpone her trip home, get off the train and accompany him during his final, fleeting hours in Europe before he catches a plane and heads home. Celine smiles and agrees. Stepping onto the platform, Delpy does something with her face and the tilt of her head - a quizzical nod, a what-am-I-getting-into look - that's sublime.

As Jesse and Celine roam aimlessly through Vienna they run into two actors staging a drama about a cow. They find a record store, sharing a cramped booth to listen to a birdy-voiced folksinger. They encounter a palm reader and a street person who offers to write a poem built around a word of their choice. They pick milkshake, and the tattered poet, who appears out of the dark, dutifully crafts some hokey beatnik verses. It's a romantic moment, but there's nothing cloying about it - nothing Sleepless in Seattle cute. Even the film's sweetly satisfying resolution (will they stick to their "rational adult decision" not to pursue the relationship further, or do they agree to meet again?) is delivered with a casual lack of pomp.

Vienna, a city not that often seen in film, supplies a perfect backdrop for Linklater's story: stately, historic yet unfamiliar, friendly and full of surprise. Lee Daniel, the cinematographer who also shot Slacker and Dazed, captures the city's streetscapes, its fading light and nighttime blue, with a naturalistic eye.

In a sense, the love story in Before Sunrise - the brief encounter, the passion of possibilities - is as mundane a human experience as waking up in the morning and getting out of bed. To be sure, such a romance is an enormously emotional, meaningful experience, but it's also a cliche. In his loose, pseudo-documentarian way, Linklater explores both the extraordinariness and the ordinariness of two people falling in love. It's a winning move, a winning movie.