Before Sunrise
Director: Richard Linklater
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in the Rice Thresher, February 3, 1995
Julie Delpy has a great nose. It's not your standard run-of-the-mill nose, it doesn't just go straight-diagonally and then into the face like what we'd usually consider to be perfect. It gently curves down and back towards her face, adding a small but effective dimension of uniqueness. It's not very unusual and, in fact, it's not that noticeable, but when you do see it, it brings depth and individuality to the proceedings.
Which also aptly describes Before Sunrise, Austin director Richard Linklater's newest film. Enjoyment of the movie comes not from the big picture but from the details. In fact, there are times when it seems that the sum of the parts is more than the whole.
It helps that there's no real plot, just a look at how two strangers interact with each other. Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American, and Celine (Delpy), a Parisian, meet on a Vienna-bound train and decide to explore the city together for the 14 hours until sunrise, when the city turns into a pumpkin. Jesse has to catch his plane back home and Celine the train back to Paris.
Of course they fall in love. It's a movie, and there are laws about these things. Plot twists and dynamic action are the last thing you'll find here. Boy and Girl meet and fall in love. The end. Nobody loses anybody.
What makes this movie are the little scenes, looks and gestures that give away just how much Celine and Jesse are being drawn to one another. Jesse nervously fiddles with a saltshaker talking to Celine in the dining car of the train. The two share a listening booth at a record store and silently listen to Kath Bloom's "Come Here," giving away their thoughts with only their eyes and body language. When Celine tells of her fear of airplanes, Jesse pretends to make an explosion effect when she says the word "crash," only to catch himself and stop, embarrassed. Little touches, to be sure, but it's moments like these that let us know exactly what Jesse and Celine are thinking. That and the fact that they talk a whole lot.
Unlike Slacker and Dazed And Confused, Linklater's other films, Sunrise keeps its character content to a bare minimum. Jesse and Celine basically stand alone, and everybody else flits in long enough to push the relationship one step further before disappearing. Delpy and Hawke have to carry the entire movie by themselves.
Thankfully, the acting is terrific, especially from Hawke, who manages to come across as paradoxically both confident and nervous. When Jesse describes a Quaker wedding, you can see his disappointment when Celine breaks eye contact, even though neither of them say a word. At another point, he begins to brush Celine's slightly disheveled hair back, only to catch himself and stop, realizing that he might be breaking an unwritten rule. It seems so natural a sequence of events that it's hard to imagine it being scripted and rehearsed.
Delpy shines by having Celine express the enthusiasm and giddiness that Jesse has to try so hard to pretend to show. Her restrained glee in stealing wine glasses while Jesse procures a bottle of wine as a distraction is terrific, and gives a fair indication of who and what she is. If Jesse is shy person who pretends to be outgoing, Celine is the exact opposite. It's no accident that she's the one who initiates the first kiss.
If you've been captivated by the ads, be warned: there's nary an Evan Dando tune in sight. In fact, not one. Despite the fact that the commercials blast the Lemonheads' "Into Your Arms" and push Hawke's newfound GenX Poster Boy status to the fore (a move obviously appreciated by the woman at my screening who whistled the first two times he appeared on screen), this isn't Reality Bites. Those who harbor visions of Ethan the Sensitive Loner will be disappointed, no doubt. Like Linklater's last film, Dazed And Confused, the advertisements manage to thoroughly misrepresent an intelligent film as a mindless teen comedy. Ignore them. What makes Before Sunrise as good as it is can't be encapsulated in 30 seconds of screen time. That's Linklater's curse, but it's also his blessing. Maybe he'll finally get the audience he deserves.