Before Sunrise

On a train in Europe, Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American who is about to catch the plane from Vienna back to America the next day, and Celine (Julie Delpy), a Parisian who is returning home after visiting her grandmother, meet and begin talking.

As the train nears Vienna, Jesse and Celine prepare to say goodbye.  However, at the last minute, Jesse returns, and, implores Celine to get off the train with him.  Explaining that his plane doesn't leave until the following morning, and that he can't afford a hotel, and merely planned to walk around all night, he tells her that he feels they have a strong connection and the time would pass much quicker if he could talk to her, and get to know her more.  Feeling the same, Celine agrees, and the two spend the night walking around Vienna, discussing everything and anything.  Knowing that they must part in the morning, they reveal more of themselves than they usually would.

Essentially, this is the entire plot of the film.  Due to the short time frame - the film spans maybe nine hours total, at least four hours of which the characters spend asleep - every little gesture and word is magnified.  Every phrase the characters utter has a purpose - to show their developing relationship, and to give insight into their backgrounds.

Jesse, the American, is dark-haired, blue-eyed and, really, astonishingly good-looking.  He's fairly open to new experiences, which is obvious because without that trait the film wouldn't have begun.  He later explains that his mother and father had a lot of troubles in their relationship, and that he's been told he was an accident.  Celine sympathizes, but he then goes on to explain that this makes him feel free - the fact that he isn't meant to exist, in a way, means he can do anything he wants; the world is full of possibilities.

In many ways, Jesse comes across as a cynic, while Celine is more likely to believe the best of people.  This is particularly obvious when they meet a palm-reader, and in the scene where a wandering poet tells them to give him a random word; he'll fit it into a poem, and if they like it, they can pay what they think it's worth.  Celine loves the poem, but Jesse feels compelled to point out that, in his opinion, the poet probably had one or two stock poems, into which he fitted the required word, rather than writing each one as an original.  However, he soon drops the subject, and allows Celine to have her delight in it.

It soon becomes apparent that at heart, Jesse is a romantic, but he's been hurt - or rather not hurt, nothing so dramatic; more let down - by events and people in his past, to such an extent that he's built up a cynical shell.  However, he's still brave enough to put himself out there and take chances (as becomes apparent in the sequel, which I'll try to avoid mentioning from now on).

Celine, the blond Parisian looks, as Jesse observes, rather stunningly like a Boticelli angel.  She's not as cynical as Jesse, and comes across as more spiritual.  At one point, she shows him a graveyard in Vienna, where all the bodies found in the river end up; specifically she shows him the grave of a young girl, Elizabeth, who died at age thirteen.  When Celine first saw the grave, she was also thirteen, and that struck a chord with her.

Celine's also a little more kooky than Jesse - she inspires a game where they each pretend to phone a friend to tell them about this strange person they met on a train.

The relationship between the two characters is what really makes the story grow, and the two actors play their parts amazingly well.  The on-screen chemistry between them is amazing - all the tiny little gestures, and words.  The dialogue in the film seems almost ad-libbed, it's so easy and natural.  The image of these two people getting to know each other seems entirely plausible, and so believable.  There's one scene, near the beginning, where the two characters are in a booth in a record store, listening to a song.  It's about love, and although neither says anything, you can see in their movements and glances that they are both thinking about their feelings, and the lyrics to the song.  They're both pretending that they're not thinking that the song is about them, and the awkwardness of their actions only make the scene more realistic and sweet.

The film is very focused on the two lead characters, and the camera angles and amount of close-ups used reflect that.  Although the dialogue is important to the film, the moments of silence, where thoughts are shown through gestures alone are really effective.  The amounts of other languages used in the film - for instance, the first words are in German - make it feel really European, and again add to the realism.  These phrases aren't translated, which puts us in Jesse's shoes, almost - he only speaks English.

In summary, the film is definitely unusual.  The characters are sweet and endearing, and you really want their relationship to end well.  The film ends on a cliff hanger, and although the nine year wait for a sequel must have frustrated quite a few people, watching it in retrospective means I can see the sequel immediately, as I certainly plan to after watching this.

All in all, it's a film about love, and about people, and I'm afraid, if you're not interested in those subjects you won't like it.  Although parts of it steal from cliches, that only makes it better.  Before Sunrise is one of very few films to be rated 100% fresh on popular review site, Rotten Tomatoes.  In other words, no-one has ever reviewed it badly, a fact that speaks for itself.