| Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise achieves a near perfect balancing act between unabashed romanticism and existential despair. That, of course, makes it sound like a heavy slog of a film, especially after I mention that almost the entirety of its 101 minutes consists of two people talking—but it’s not. Not at all. Part of the film’s exquisite beauty is the way it draws us into the ever-evolving romantic and spiritual and intellectual connection between its two college-age protagonists—an American tourist named Jesse (Ethan Hawke) who has been riding around Europe on a Eurail pass for several weeks and a Parisian named Céline (Julie Delpy) who is returning from visiting her grandmother in Budapest. There is nothing especially unique about either character; they are, in a sense, each representative of a particular type of twentysomething, namely the kind who reads a lot, hangs out in coffee shops, and finds philosophical debate enjoyable—in other words, Linklater surrogates. Yet, as the film unfolds, Hawke and Delpy not only make them into indelible, unique characters, but make absolutely palpable their attraction to each other, in both mind and body. The film opens on a train, where Jesse and Céline meet after she moves seats to get away from a bickering German couple (a foreshadowing of love gone sour, an issue with which both of them grapple and worry). They bond immediately over the books they’re reading, and Jesse invites Céline to join him in the lounge car for lunch. They talk and talk, easing into a conversational connection that allows them to gradually expose who are they are via their memories, fears, hopes, and dreams. When the train arrives at the station in Vienna, Jesse takes a chance and invites Céline to get off with him. He is scheduled to fly out at 9:30 the next morning, and lacking money for a hotel, he had planned to spend the rest of the day and the night walking around the city. There is a moment of hesitation, but she agrees, thus setting up the dramatic stakes for the rest of the film, which is little more than how intense their relationship can get before the clock runs out on them. Thus, much Before Sunrise rests on the attractive shoulders of Hawke and Delpy, both of whom were established young stars with an impressive list of credits in both studio and independent films; Delpy had appeared as an object of intense desire in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors: White (1993) as well as Disney’s The Three Musketeers (1993), while Hawke had become the face of Gen-X slackerdom with his role in Reality Bites (1994) after a decade of playing young, idealist characters in films like Explorers (1985) and Dead Poets Society (1989). They performances here are quite remarkable, especially as they grow gradually better as the film progresses. That is, in the early passages they are a bit awkward and unsure, much like their characters, but as Jesse and Céline get to know each other better and feel increasingly at ease sharing their deepest selves, the actors’ performances become more fluid, natural, and relaxed. By the end, they feel fully inhabited, lived in, complete. This is perhaps best illustrated in the “telephone sequence,” in which Jesse and Céline are sitting across from each in a café and each pretend to call a friend back home to explain what is going on as a means of revealing to each other the depth of their growing feelings. It’s a genuinely beautiful sequence—sublime, in fact, in the way it is both subtly erotic and undeniably sweet (they are, in a way, like kids who are just a bit too shy to day what they mean directly). Because the film eschews anything resembling a traditional narrative structure, Linklater and his co-screenwriter Kim Krizan are free to follow the characters through their discourse, building in small dramatic conflicts that help give some shape to the film’s flow, but without insisting on forced peaks and valleys. There is a memorable scene, for example, when they are at an outdoor café and are approached by a palm reader. Céline, who is in some ways the more trusting and open of the two, allows her to read her palm and then pays her the five shillings. Jesse is annoyed by what he sees as an obvious con job, and he derides Céline’s willingness to go through the ruse, albeit with a veneer of humor so as not to overstep their tentative bounds. For her part, Céline is clearly hurt by his words, but she is similarly unwilling to enter into a grand dramatic moment so early in their relationship, which shows that, however open they may be, they are still holding back. In other words, while Before Sunrise is inundated with a sense of intense romanticism, it is also realistic enough to understand the limitations of young minds that are grappling with the last vestiges of childhood naiveté and idealism, but unwilling to sink into any kind of outright cynicism or despair. They are working through their time in life, and the beauty of Before Sunrise is that we get to see them doing it together, if only for a brief, shining moment that, in the film’s one concession to romantic tragedy, is destined to end.
Copyright © 2017 James Kendrick Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick All images copyright © The Criterion Collection |
Overall Rating: (4)
James Kendrick offers, exclusively on Qnetwork, over 2,500 reviews on a wide range of films. All films have a star rating and you can search in a variety of ways for the type of movie you want. If you're just looking for a good movie, then feel free to browse our library of Movie Reviews.
© 1998 - 2024 Qnetwork.com - All logos and trademarks in this site are the property of their respective owner.