Cast: Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke

Director: Richard Linklater

Screenplay: Richard Linklater

Running time: 1 hr 41 mins

Genre: Romance/Comedy



CRITIQUE:


The greatest romantic stories of all-time are those that are left unconsummated. That’s how romanticists believe, anyway. That love of the truest nature is more exquisite when it’s never achieved. Brief Encounter, Casablanca, and – er... Titanic – have shown us how devastating yet awfully painful and passionate love can be. Whilst Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise isn’t certainly an all-out epic of tragedy and romance, it’s a microcosm of the unassuming romantic-comedy, a film form that is oft-exploited, undervalued, and looted by none other than either J-Lo or Kate Hudson. Perhaps there’s a miniature percentage of the world’s population who would willingly sit down and watch an entire 90 minutes of two people talking, walking, arguing, flirting, frolicking – in other words, more Godardian than say, Spielbergian. People who love films where nothing much happens will lap this one up. But this simple premise of an American backpacker Jesse wooing an unknown yet attractive French student Celine on a train to Paris, both getting hitched at the beautiful Vienna, starts an uncompromising conversational picture that is more honest, more rewarding, more intelligent than all J-Lo and Kate Hudson rom-coms put together. There isn’t much as a story than these two characters unfolding the essence of their lives, as a means to an end await in the horizon (the pair spends the whole day and night together until sunrise, hence the title, as he flies back to America). The dialogues unfurl naturally, and the chemistry between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy is sparkling, unmatched. These two twentysomethings eschews sex, terrified to enter the sordid, fleeting territory of one-night-stands, and what happens is a profound, intricate moment in Vienna that’s going to be imprinted into the lives of these characters as they carry on in their lives. Their vaguely planned meeting in the same city after six months is pitched out between them – but of course, it doesn’t happen. And that supposed meeting doesn’t matter, as Linklater opts for a rather offbeat conclusion, like real life, we never know what would happen next.


VERDICT:

A brief encounter that is the defining moment of these two star-crossed perfectly-matched couple, Before Sunrise is a naturalistic affair. You don’t even recognise Hawke and Delpy performing, they embody the Jesse and Celine as two impeccably convincing real-life characters.



RATING: A-