Richard Linklater makes a night of conversation feel absorbing and unexpectedly tender. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy give the romance its awkward life, though the talk occasionally sounds too pleased with its own intelligence.
Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise is a funny, affecting romance that earns our interest in two people by letting them talk. The story stays with Jesse and Céline, who meet on a train and spend a night wandering through Vienna. We recommend it warmly, with a warning for anyone who needs a plot to keep changing direction. It helps that Linklater understands how much effort goes into sounding spontaneous.
The screenplay, written by Linklater and Kim Krizan, gives the conversation the awkwardness of people trying to be interesting without seeming to try. Their opinions matter because each wants to know what the other makes of them. We listen partly for what they think, but also for the impression they hope to make. That keeps even the more expansive stretches from sounding like a discussion that could have happened between any two strangers.
Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delpy’s Céline are persuasive because neither performer treats attraction as something that removes embarrassment. They make the effort of getting acquainted visible even when the conversation seems easy. We felt unexpectedly nervous for them when the talking gave way to silence. After all that apparent confidence, simply being together without a subject to discuss suddenly looks difficult. Those wordless moments make us care about them more than another clever exchange would.
Lee Daniel’s cinematography makes the listener worth watching even during the more fluent stretches of conversation. We keep looking for the small signs that a remark has landed differently from how it was meant. Sheri Galloway and Sandra Adair’s editing gives the exchanges room without making every pause seem momentous. The relaxed pace works because a change in the pair’s ease with each other can be enough to move a scene along.
Florian Reichmann’s production design helps Vienna feel hospitable to this aimless evening, a place where lingering seems a reasonable thing to do. The city is a flattering setting for their freedom from ordinary obligations, and the film makes no great effort to disguise that. Fred Frith’s music stays modest beside the conversation. That restraint works: we can attend to the changes in the speakers’ voices without being told how much each exchange should matter.
There are stretches when their self-consciousness becomes wearing. Linklater and Krizan occasionally let a line sound too pleased with its own intelligence, and an exchange can continue after we have grasped what each person is trying to communicate. Anyone irritated by young people working out what they think in public will find some of this hard going. The film’s freedom from practical worries is part of its pleasure, though it makes the evening feel a little protected.
Yet a romance is allowed an unusually fortunate meeting, and this one is attentive to the uncertainty that survives good luck. Across its 101 minutes, it gives embarrassment and curiosity time that a more hurried courtship would spend on complications. The modest scale feels right for the people in it. Make time for it when conversation is what you want from an evening, rather than something to talk over.
