Taglines: …When love can come as a complete surprise.
Before Sunrise movie storyline. Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American tourist, has been traveling around Europe on his own aimlessly for the past few weeks on his Eurail pass. His last stop, where he is currently heading, is Vienna, from where he will catch a flight home tomorrow morning. Celine (Julie Delpy), a Parisienne, had been in Budapest visiting her grandmother. She is currently heading back to Paris to resume her studies at the Sorbonne.
Jesse and Celine meet by chance on the same westbound train out of Budapest. The connection they feel from their short conversation on the train is enough for Jesse to suggest at the last minute that she get off the train with him in Vienna and that they spend time together in Vienna – just wandering around the city as was his original plan as he doesn’t have the money for a hotel – before he needs to go to the airport, and at which time she will board the next train to Paris. If it ends up she feels uncomfortable with him as time progresses, she could ditch him at any point. Celine agrees.
As they wander from place to place in Vienna, they talk about their philosophies of life and love. They also talk about logistical issues regarding their time, such as why Jesse was in Europe to begin with, what they are feeling for each other, if there is a future for them together and if so what that future may look like taking into consideration both their current lots in life.
Before Sunrise is a 1995 romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater and written by Linklater and Kim Krizan. The film follows Jesse (Ethan Hawke), a young American man, and Céline (Julie Delpy), a young French woman, who meet on a train and disembark in Vienna, where they spend the night walking around the city and getting to know and falling in love with each other.
The plot is considered minimalistic, as not much happens aside from walking and talking. The two characters’ ideas and perspectives on life and love are detailed. Jesse is a romantic disguised as a cynic, and Céline is seemingly a romantic, albeit with some doubts. Taking place over the course of one night, their limited time together is always on their minds, and leads to each revealing a lot about themselves partly because they both initially believe they will never see each other again.
Before Sunrise premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 1995, and was released theatrically eight days later; grossing $5.5 million against a $2.5 million budget. Critics praised the performances of Hawke and Delpy, and the film received a rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Jesse and Céline later make an appearance in Linklater’s 2001 film Waking Life. A 2004 sequel, Before Sunset, picks up the story nine years after the events of the first film, and a 2013 sequel, Before Midnight, picks it up again a further nine years later.
About the Production
Before Sunrise was inspired by a woman whom writer/director Richard Linklater met in a toy shop in Philadelphia in 1989. They walked around the city together, conversing deep into the night. Originally, in the screenplay, who the two people were and the city they spend time in was vague. Linklater realized that because the film is so much a dialogue between a man and a woman, it was important to have a strong female co-writer. He chose Kim Krizan, who had small roles in his two previous films Slacker and Dazed and Confused. According to Linklater, he “loved the way her mind worked – a constant stream of confident and intelligent ideas”.
Linklater and Krizan talked about the concept of the film and the characters for a long time. He wanted to explore the “relationship side of life and discover two people who had complete anonymity and try to find out who they really were”. He decided to put Jesse and Céline in a foreign country because “when you’re traveling, you’re much more open to experiences outside your usual realm”. He and Krizan worked on an outline. They wrote the actual screenplay in 11 days.
Linklater spent nine months casting the film because he saw so many people but had trouble finding the right actors for the roles of Jesse and Céline. When Linklater first considered casting Hawke, he thought that the actor was too young for the part. Linklater saw Hawke at a play in New York City and reconsidered after talking to the actor. For Céline, Linklater met Julie Delpy and liked her personality. After they did a final reading, Linklater knew that Delpy and Hawke were right for the roles. Once Delpy and Hawke agreed to do the film, they went to Austin and talked with Linklater and Krizan for a few days.
In 2016, Delpy told Creative Screenwriting, “Ethan and I basically re-wrote all of it. There was an original screenplay, but it wasn’t very romantic, believe it or not. It was just a lot of talking, rather than romance. Richard hired us because he knew we were writing and he wanted us to bring that romance to the film. We brought those romantic ideas and that’s how I wrote something that actually got made, without really getting credit for it. But, if I had written Before Sunrise and been credited, then I doubt it would have been financed”. Though Delpy and Hawke were not credited with writing this film, they received credit for co-writing the sequels.
Themes and Inspiration
Before Sunrise revolves largely around the twin themes of self-fulfillment and self-discovery through a significant other, charging the concept through the introduction of a twelve-hour time constraint in which the goals implicit to the two themes have to be realized. They are underlined by the poem “Delusion Angel”, which evokes a longing for complete and unifying, possibly even redeeming, understanding between two partners in a world which is itself unknowable, and over which one can exercise no control.
An important role is played by the theme of spontaneous and uninhibited response to one’s environment. It is reflected by the actions of Jesse and Céline, whose joint stream of consciousness, initiated by a previously unmeditated decision to leave the train together, allows them to temporarily detach themselves from the world, and enter a realm where only the other’s company is of importance. Come morning, Jesse remarks that he and Céline have again entered “real time”.
It could be argued that Before Sunrise subsumes its main themes under that of life. In one scene, Céline and Jesse visit the Friedhof der Namenlosen, the Cemetery of the Nameless in Simmering. The people buried in the cemetery have found anonymity in death; by learning to know and understand one another, Céline and Jesse experience and embrace life, suspending their own mortality.
The film leaves audience members to decide for themselves whether Jesse and Céline will actually meet again in six months. Critic Robin Wood has written that after he published an essay on the film (in a 1996 issue of CineAction), Linklater wrote him to say that “neither he nor the two actors ever doubted that the date would be kept.”
The film takes place on June 16, Bloomsday. The story of Jesse and Céline was inspired by an evening that Richard Linklater spent with a young woman named Amy Lehrhaupt, whom he met during a day he spent in Philadelphia traveling from New York to Austin. Not until 2010 was Linklater informed that Lehrhaupt had actually died in a motorcycle accident prior to the release of Before Sunrise.
Before Sunrise (1995)
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Andrea Eckert, Hanno Pöschl, Karl Bruckschwaiger, Tex Rubinowitz, Erni Mangold, Dominik Castell, Haymon Maria Buttinger, Bilge Jeschim, Adam Goldberg
Screenplay by: Richard Linklater, Kim Krizan
Production Design by: Florian Reichmann
Cinematography by: Lee Daniel
Film Editing by: Sandra Adair
Costume Design by: Florentina Welley
Makeup Department: Karen Dunst
Music by: Fred Frith
MPAA Rating: R for some strong language.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: January 19, 1995 (Sundance), January 27, 1995 (United States)
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