Before Sunrise

Before Sunrise captures the poignancy and openness of romance’s first flush but unless you are in the same condition or aspire to be it is not a film of particular interest.

Jesse (Ethan Hawke) who is travelling to Vienna by train to catch a plane to America meets Celine (Julie Delpy). They get talking and Jesse persuades Celine to get off the train and join him killing time in Vienna until his flight the next day.

Before Sunrise is an unusually talky film, much more in the French style than an American one but despite the intelligent nature of the dialogue it is as old-fashioned and sentimental as any Hollywood screen romance. We know from the get-go of Celine and Jesse's supposedly chance encounter where and how the film is going to go (given narrative conventions we actually know all this before they meet) and each scene is synechdochically related to every other as the pair stroll around Vienna and verbally meander from topic to topic as they explore each other and the sexual divide the vortex of lust pulling on them all the while. Although this is supposed to be unaffectedly naturalistic, and the film was extensively praised for this quality, it is far from cinema verité.

Aside from the engagingly youthful and photogenic charm of the two leads Linklater peppers the film with as many romantic contrivances as one of the classics of the genre, An Affair To Remember  – he puts them in a listening booth while Kath Bloom sings “Come Here”, a street poet composes a touching poem for them, the morning after there’s someone playing a harpsichord in a basement (at sunrise!) and they dance and so on.  Linklater, who co-wrote the film, perhaps deserves credit for his fluid, unobtrusive approach to the romance genre but why the film has earned the critical plaudits it has eludes me

 

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