FILM REVIEW; Strangers on a Train and Soul Mates for a Night (original) (raw)
Movies|FILM REVIEW; Strangers on a Train and Soul Mates for a Night
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FILM REVIEW
Before Sunrise
Directed by Richard Linklater
Drama, Romance
R
1h 41m
- Jan. 27, 1995
Credit...The New York Times Archives
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January 27, 1995
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Section C, Page
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Richard Linklater, the director of "Slacker" and "Dazed and Confused," has an intoxicatingly romantic idea for his latest film. In "Before Sunrise," which he wrote with Kim Krizan, Mr. Linklater presents two attractive 20-something travelers who meet eagerly en route to Vienna and share a night of pure freedom there.
In this, the Eurailpass version of "An Affair to Remember," there's more than romantic love in the air. There's also the exhilaration of making contact with a kindred spirit, of instant conversational intimacy between two strangers whose paths could lead them anywhere. Along with the first blush of infatuation, there's the sense that life holds infinite possibility for characters who are still so avid and unencumbered. When Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) recognize each other as instant soul mates, they talk about everything and nothing as if there were no tomorrow.
Because there isn't. "Before Sunrise" contrives a one-night time limit on this idyll, thus imposing some dramatic structure on what otherwise might be a string of free-floating riffs and reveries. Like Mr. Linklater's previous films and like last year's "Four Weddings and a Funeral," which was also an the opening-night feature of the Sundance Film Festival, "Before Sunrise" uses external circumstance to shape its storytelling.
The effect here isn't as seamless, and the stars have to strain for the right naturalness at times. But "Before Sunrise" taps into something universal, capturing the freshness of characters who are as much in love with self-expression as they could be with each other. What Mr. Linklater does best here is to come up with conversational gambits that have just the right fancifulness to suit this situation.
After Jesse spots the beautiful Celine on board a train and tries to talk her into getting off in Vienna with him, for instance, he tells her to think in terms of time travel. Years hence, she may be married to someone else and wondering about the roads not taken, romantically speaking. She may imagine that Jesse would have been wonderful for her, even if actually he's not. So here, says Jesse, is a chance to find that out ahead of time. When he suggests she think of a night in Vienna "as a favor to your future husband," he captures Mr. Linklater's reasoning at its pitch-perfect best.
Mr. Linklater has previously expressed such thoughts through characters more slackerish or stoned than Jesse and Celine happen to be. That makes his direction here less fluid at first, with the actors showing a forced effervescence in their early get-acquainted scenes. Without the studied casualness of his earlier films, Mr. Linklater adopts a straightforwardness that sometimes falls flat, especially with material this talky. "Before Sunrise" counts on charm, chemistry and the city of Vienna to cast a more complete spell than they actually do.
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