Before Sunrise kicks off a story that would end up spanning nearly two decades simply through two strangers meeting on a train. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) are both twenty-three-year-olds who tend to be highly contemplative, but that's about all they have in common. Though they may share little common ground, particularly in their wildly different personalities, Jesse and Celine do manage to hit it off in talking to one another. In fact, Jesse finds himself so enamored with this girl that he asks her to stay the night with him in Vienna. It's just one night, they can just walk around the city, look at the sights and talk some more. Celine accepts the offer and the rest of Before Sunrise follows this one evening they spend together getting to know one another.
If you're at all familiar with the works of Linklater, you know that Jesse and Celine are not gonna spend this night in Vienna engaging in all kinds of glamorous romantic escapades. As seen in works like Boyhood or Dazed & Confused, Linklater loves to pinpoint small seemingly disposable moments in life that end up being the kind of moment you wistfully reminisce about years down the road. Thus, the time Jesse and Celine spend together is more realistically down-to-Earth, with some plans (like them seeing a play they've been invited to) casually not coming to fruition and small nooks & crannies of Vienna being used as backdrops for their numerous dialogue exchanges rather than notable Vienna landmarks.
Using more lesser-known Vienna locales for scenery particularly resonated with me as a brilliant way to personalize Jesse and Celine's visit to Vienna, it feels like they really are just looking around and stumbling upon places organically rather than just going down a checklist of famous locales you'd see on a Vienna postcard. Amidst these environments is the conversations between Jesse and Celine, which allow for both the directing of Linklater and the two lead performances to truly shine. One of the many great things about Linklater's uncanny ability to channel realism is that he's just so good at capturing subtle bits of human behavior, like a moment in Before Sunrise where Jesse, while talking to Celine on a tram, extends his hand out, seemingly to brush her hair over, but then quickly draws it back without Celine even noticing.
It's such a small moment, but it's one that perfectly captures the most awkward part of romantic interactions. In just this minuscule gesture, you get to see a surge of confidence in Jesse before awkward reality steps back into his brain. There are all kinds of that sort of subtle body language that manages to speak volumes about the characters scattered throughout Before Sunrise and they are sometimes captured in extended single takes. Filming some of these exchanges (most notably the aforementioned tram conversation) in just one elongated shot immerses the viewer in the conversations Jesse and Celine are engaging in without any abrupt cuts to disrupt our thorough engagement with just these two people talking.
And then, of course, there are the excellent performances that anchor the whole project. Ethan Hawke, in his first of numerous collaborations with Richard Linklater, keeps in step with the realistic nature of Before Sunrise with his eerily accurate portrayal of a detached young dude who is convinced he has all the answers in the world. It's remarkable how Hawke so perfectly recreates this personality while also injecting enough charm in Jesse to make it clear why Celine would fall for him. Speaking of Celine, she's portrayed by Julie Delpy in a fantastic performance whose highlights are how Delpy portrays Celine's sense of realistic optimism and her humorous portrayal of Celine refusing to take any of Jesse's BS in stride.
The two of them have the perfect kind of awkward yet palpable chemistry needed for a movie that's all about capturing a realistic portrait of romance in your early twenty's. To boot, their performances get unintentional extra layers of gravitas when one considers where they're characters will be in nearly two decades with Before Midnight, ditto for the dialogue which has numerous lines (namely Jesse referencing Celine's "future husband" to coerce her to stay in Vienna with him) that feel like they were always meant to set up future installments following this couple throughout the rest of their lives. Even before considering how it relates to future top-notch movies like Before Midnight, though, Before Sunrise is still able to stand out as a phenomenal exploration of imperfect yet unforgettable young love.
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