Before Sunrise (1995)

Dir: Richard Linklater

Writers: Richard Linklater, Kim Krizan

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

This movie is a conversation. If you're interested in fast-paced or action-packed movies--this movie is not for you. Young, American 20-something Jesse (Hawke) is on a European rail when he meets Céline, a beautiful French girl. They talk. Everybody at some point has felt that energy when your conversation with a person just goes on and on and there's no pause or stalling. Those conversations are quite honestly some of life's best moments, aren't they?

And so we get to witness Jesse and Céline's. He asks her to spend the day with him in Vienna before he flies back to America, and she accepts even though she's on her way back home to Paris via the train. What ensues is a beautiful, spontaneous series of activities with Jesse and Céline as we listen in on their conversation--oh, and Vienna, Austria is the background.

Their characters seem so genuine and they are funny and flawed but I want to be their friends. I want them to be together. By the end of the movie, they decide not to share their phone numbers and addresses but because their connection is so strong they make a pact to meet back at the Vienna train station in exactly six months. The ambiguous ending leaves it all up to the viewer: do Jesse and Céline rejoin and continue their burgeoning romance? Does one make it and the other doesn't? Do neither make it out to Vienna? It's almost a Rorschach test for how idealist or realist you are as a person. I always thought they'd meet back up.

The Best: The chemistry between these two characters just oozes off the screen! I love them both and they are both played wonderfully by Hawke and Delpy.

Fact: Linklater based the film on an evening he spent with a woman in Philadelphia. That just makes me think he probably took the Amtrak, on a line I'm very familiar with, and it amazes me when I think about how un-magical Philadelphia and the Northeast Corridor rail-line is in comparison to Vienna, Austria. The backdrop really adds to the movie's magic.

Rating: ********* (9 out of 10)