Before Sunrise movie storyline. On his way to Vienna, American tourist Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meets Celine (Julie Delpy), a student returning to Paris. After long conversations forge a surprising connection between them, Jesse convinces Celine to get off the train with him in Vienna. Since his flight to the U.S. departs the next morning and he has no money for lodging, they wander the city together, taking in the experiences of Vienna and each other. As the night progresses, their bond makes separating in the morning a difficult choice.
Before Sunrise is a 1995 romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater and written by Linklater and Kim Krizan. The film follows Jesse (Ethan Hawke), a young American man, and Céline (Julie Delpy), a young French woman, who meet on a train and disembark in Vienna, where they spend the night walking around the city and getting to know and falling in love with each other.
The plot is considered minimalistic, as not much happens aside from walking and talking. The two characters’ ideas and perspectives on life and love are detailed. Jesse is a romantic disguised as a cynic, and Céline is seemingly a romantic, albeit with some doubts. Taking place over the course of one night, their limited time together is always on their minds, and leads to each revealing a lot about themselves partly because they both initially believe they will never see each other again.
Before Sunrise premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 1995, and was released theatrically eight days later; grossing $5.5 million against a $2.5 million budget. Critics praised the performances of Hawke and Delpy, and the film received a rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Jesse and Céline later make an appearance in Linklater’s 2001 film Waking Life. A 2004 sequel, Before Sunset, picks up the story nine years after the events of the first film, and a 2013 sequel, Before Midnight, picks it up again a further nine years later.
Film Review for Before Sunrise
They Meet Cute on a train in Austria. They start talking. There is a meeting of the minds (our most erotic organs) and they like each other. They’re in their early 20s. He’s an American with a Eurail pass, on his way to Vienna to catch a cheap flight home. She’s French, a student at the Sorbonne, on her way back to Paris. They go to the buffet car, drink some coffee, keep talking, and he has this crazy idea: Why doesn’t she get off the train with him in Vienna, and they can be together until he catches his plane?
This sort of scenario has happened, I imagine, millions of times. It has rarely happened in a nicer, sweeter, more gentle way than in Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise,” which I could call a “Love Affair” for Generation X, except that Jesse and Celine stand outside their generation, and especially outside its boring insistence on being bored.
There is no hidden agenda in this movie. There will be no betrayals, melodrama, phony violence, or fancy choreography in sex scenes. It’s mostly conversation, as they wander the city of Vienna from mid-afternoon until the following dawn. Nobody hassles them.
“Before Sunrise” is so much like real life – like a documentary with an invisible camera – that I found myself remembering real conversations I had experienced with more or less the same words. You may remember him from “Dead Poets Society,” “White Fang” or especially “Reality Bites,” in which he played a character who is 180 degrees different from this one. She starred in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “White,” as the wife who eventually regrets dumping her husband. Here she is ravishingly beautiful and, more important, warm and matter-of-fact, speaking English so well the screenplay has to explain it (she spent some time in the States).
What do they talk about? Nothing spectacular. Parents, death, former boyfriends and girlfriends, music, and the problem with reincarnation when there are more people alive now than in all previous times put together (if there is a finite number of souls, are we living in a period of a 5-to-1 split?). Linklater’s dialogue is weirdly amusing, as when Jesse suggests they should think of their time together as a sort of “time travel,” and envisions a future in which she is with her boring husband and wonders, “what would some of those guys be like that I knew when I was young,” and wishes she could travel back in time to see – and so here she is, back in time, seeing.
A sexual attraction is obviously present between them, and Linklater handles it gently, with patience. There is a wonderful scene in the listening booth of a music store, where each one looks at the other, and then looks away, so as not to be caught. The way they do this – the timing, the slight embarrassment – is delicate and true to life. And I liked their first kiss, on the same ferris wheel used in “The Third Man,” so much I didn’t mind that they didn’t know Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten had been there before them.
The city of Vienna is presented as a series of meetings and not as a travelogue. They meet amateur actors, fortunetellers, street poets, friendly bartenders. They spend some time in a church at midnight. They drink wine in a park. They find a way to exchange personal information by holding imaginary phone calls with imaginary best friends. They talk about making love. There are good arguments for, and against.
This is Linklater’s third film, after “Slacker’ (1991) and “Dazed and Confused” (1993). He’s onto something. He likes the way ordinary time unfolds for people, as they cross paths, start talking, share their thoughts and uncertain philosophies. His first movie, set in Austin, Texas, followed one character until he met a second, then the second until he met a third, and so on, eavesdropping on one life and conversation after another. The second film was a long night at the end of a high school year, as the students regarded their futures. Now there’s “Before Sunrise,” about two nice kids, literate, sensitive, tentative, intoxicated by the fact that their lives stretch out before them, filled with mystery and hope, and maybe love.
Before Sunrise (1995)
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Andrea Eckert, Hanno Pöschl, Karl Bruckschwaiger, Tex Rubinowitz, Erni Mangold, Dominik Castell, Haymon Maria Buttinger, Bilge Jeschim, Adam Goldberg
Screenplay by: Richard Linklater, Kim Krizan
Production Design by: Florian Reichmann
Cinematography by: Lee Daniel
Film Editing by: Sandra Adair
Costume Design by: Florentina Welley
Makeup Department: Karen Dunst
Music by: Fred Frith
MPAA Rating: R for some strong language.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: January 19, 1995 (Sundance), January 27, 1995 (United States)
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