Published via Ecency

(source: tmdb.org)

For most of today’s audience it is difficult to imagine film series that deals with ordinary lives. Cinephiles are quite aware that some of the classics belong to that particular category, like Michael Apted’s half a century long documentary series Seven Up! or Truffaut’s five-part drama cycle depicting the life of his alter ego Antoine Doinel started with The 400 Blows. One of the more recent examples is the trilogy by American film maker Richard Linklater, spawned by his 1994 romantic drama Before Sunrise.

The plot begins on June 16th 1994 in a train from Budapest to Vienna. One of the passengers is Céline (played by Julie Delpy), young French woman who returns to Paris after visiting her grandmother. Couple annoyingly arguing in German makes her to take new seat near young man (played by Ethan Hawke) who introduces himself as Jesse, an American who is taking cheap pre-booked flight home in Vienna after spending few weeks travelling around Europe by train. Two of them take immediate liking to each other, so when Jesse proposes that she disembarks and joins him for a night of sightseeing and other adventures in Austrian capital, she agrees. They spend next few hours visiting bars, night clubs, city landmarks and exchanging their views about various subjects like love, death and relationships. As the moment of Jesse’s departure nears, they are obviously in love but at odds whether to pursue romance, remain strictly friends or maintain contact with each other.

Before Sunrise premiered at 1995 Sundance Film Festival and helped establishing reputation of Richard Linklater as one of the most interesting directors of American independent cinema, further enhanced by Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlinale. It was also one of the commercially most successful films of Linklater’s career. The reason for that can easily be found in its crowd-pleasing romantic theme as well as appealing cast members. Yet, Before Sunrise is also a very personal film for Linklater and same can be said of his co-writer Kim Krizan. Both of them based the basic premise on the film on their real life experiences – brief encounters with strangers with whom they had spent short but memorable and pleasant time. This simple premise is presented through very simple narrative structure, with plot limited to half a day and all exposition being brought through characters’ dialogues.

Linklater doesn’t want to limit his film within narrow confines of a particular genre. Before Sunrise is sometimes described as romantic comedy, although most of humour is found in brief dialogue lines or even briefer encounters with various eccentric characters on the streets of Vienna. The tone of the film at times isn’t very light and protagonists often talk about dark subjects like death and even visit a graveyard. On the other hand, although being a drama, nothing dramatic happens in the film. The only source of suspense for the audience is in protagonist’s “will-they-won’t they” dilemma, which Linklater, just like the ending, deliberately leaves ambiguous. Some other film maker would make such film look pretentious, but Linklater has enough talent to allow plot to flow smoothly, helped in many way by likeable Vienna’s locations, including some that were many decades earlier used in The Third Man. Unlike in Carol Reed’s film, Austrian capital here looks like a happy and prosperous place, enjoying benefits of post-Cold War era and unstoppable European unification, with still raging wars in nearby former Yugoslavia being addressed merely through passing remark.

But, the most important ingredient of this film’s success is the wonderful cast. Ethan Hawke, who was in the process of establishing himself as one of the most interesting and versatile actors of his generation, shines in the role of Jesse. He starts the film as confident, somewhat jaded young man with apparently sufficient financial resources to spend weeks on European vacation; Hawke very skilfully reveals Jesse to be actually a hopeless romantic. Julie Delpy, a beautiful, charming and talented French actress, is also good in the role of young woman from apparently privileged background who nevertheless faces some unpleasant realities of life, but she is also, like Jesse a hopeless romantic. Excellent performances are helped not only by Hawke and Delpy having great chemistry, but also by Linklater allowing the actors to improvise their dialogues. This, many years later, became source of controversy when Delpy claimed that she and Hawke had been among the actual authors of the film.

Before Sunrise had many fans, but it also had small number of detractors. The demarcation between the two was on whether they were romantics or cynics. The latter considered film as typical Hollywood fantasy, with Meet Cute premise being difficult to reconcile with real life and the idea of single young woman deciding to spend few hours with complete stranger not very realistic. For the fans, however, the most frustrating element of the film was the unresolved issue whether Jesse and Céline would meet again and continue what they started. Linklater, Hawke and Delpy ultimately came out as romantics and provided the answer to that question with critically acclaimed 2004 sequel Before Sunset. In 2013 Linklater closed the trilogy with another critically acclaimed film Before Midnight.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)