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copyright ©1999-2005
DigsMagazine.com.
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Plot synopsis
Jesse is an American twentysomething at the tail end of a solo trip
backpacking around Europe. Celine is a young French woman who's been
visiting her grandmother and is now en route to Paris to begin grad
school. The two find themselves sharing a train car between Budapest and
Vienna, where Jesse notices the rather fetching Celine sitting alone a
few seats up, and gets up the nerve to join her. They strike up a
conversation, which rapidly progresses from the usual
strangers-on-a-train chit-chat into something a whole lot more
interesting. When the train pulls into Vienna, the conversation is just
starting to get really good and it's clear that there's an attraction on
both ends. On a crazy whim, Jesse decides to ask Celine to get off the
train in Vienna with him. He has a half-day to kill before he has to
catch a plane back to America the next morning, and he'd much rather
spend the time with Celine than wandering around a strange city all by
his lonesome. Celine, amazingly enough, accepts his invitation. In the
fourteen hours that follow, Jesse and Celine roam the streets of Vienna,
debating politics and culture, talking about past loves, sharing their
deepest insecurities, and falling in love.
Review
Before Sunrise doesn't feel much like an American movie, and not
just because of its beautiful Old World Viennese setting. It's the sort
of artsy, bittersweet, slice-of-life drama that seems a staple of
foreign cinema, and is likely to elicit groans of boredom from those who
like their movie entertainment slick and glossy, cheerfully
Hollywoodized. The movie is essentially one great, big, long,
stream-of-conscious conversation between two characters who have a
shared tendency towards overanalyzing everything. There is no
complicated back story, there are no plot twists, there is no major
emotional revelation. There's just talk, lots and lots and lots of talk.
All of which could be boring, if Hawke and Delpy didn't have such
excellent chemistry, and director Linklater weren't so adept at filming
them. As it is, there's something incredibly intimate about the way we,
the audience, are allowed to listen in on the talk, eavesdropping as the
two characters get to know each other. It just feels so deliciously
private, all the more so because we're witness to every pause in the
conversation and sidelong glance, each anticipatory breath and missed
opportunity for a kiss -- all those quiet, slow, in-between moments that
most movies cut in order to skip to the action, but that really make you
feel the delicious, awkward, what's-going-on-here wonderment of falling
in love. So yeah, Before Sunrise is rather slow and very talky,
and there's no real plot to speak of; the characters are occasionally
awkward and frequently rambly, they're attractive, but in a scruffy,
low-key, completely ordinary sort of way. It's a romance that's
life-size rather than grand. In short, it's the sort of movie I love
best, because it feels so much like real life. —reviewed
by Yee-Fan Sun
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