9 / 10
Official trailer
Before Sunrise is Richard Linklater’s 1995 American romantic drama depicting the single overnight encounter between American traveler Jesse and French graduate student Celine after they meet on a train in Europe and decide to spend the night walking through Vienna together. The film is the first production in the Before trilogy that Linklater extended through Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013). Ethan Hawke plays Jesse Wallace. Julie Delpy plays Celine. Andrea Eckert plays a palm reader. Hanno Pöschl plays a poet.
Karl Bruckschwaiger and Tex Rubinowitz play men on a bridge. Linklater and Kim Krizan wrote the screenplay. Castle Rock Entertainment and Detour Filmproduction produced the film on a budget of approximately two and a half million dollars, and it grossed approximately five million worldwide.
I adore this film. Two strangers step off a train and talk their way through a night in Vienna, and I hang on every word as if I were eavesdropping from the next table. Linklater trusts the conversation to carry the whole picture, and Hawke and Delpy make scripted talk feel like it’s being invented on the spot. My one small complaint is that a few of the more philosophical stretches wander.
The Dialogue Structure
Conversation between Jesse and Celine across one night makes up almost the entire story of Before Sunrise.
Most romantic dramas hurry through the talk to reach the next plot point. This one stays in the talk, and I think that’s the bravest decision in the film. It pays off because the conversations feel like two people figuring each other out in real time.
The dialogue approach has aged into the model for contemporary romantic drama that engages with verbal content. The film shows how committed dialogue approach can serve romantic narrative when the underlying material justifies the structural emphasis. The later directors Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) extended the dialogue approach across longer timeframes while maintaining the structural emphasis that Before Sunrise showed.
For Writers
Committed dialogue approach can serve romantic narrative when underlying material justifies structural emphasis. The same applies to fiction. The contributor whose subject matter benefits from verbal exchange may discover that extended dialogue allows content that conventional plot development typically can’t access.
The Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy Collaboration
Hawke and Delpy developed the screenplay with Linklater through workshop sessions during preparation, and you can feel it on screen.
They play Jesse and Celine with youthful uncertainty and sudden flashes of recognition, two people finding a connection across cultural and personal differences. Delpy is the one I can’t take my eyes off. She makes Celine sharp, guarded and warm in the same breath.
Hawke and Delpy kept working this way with Linklater through Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013), and both shared Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay with him on the later films. I can’t think of many actor-director partnerships in American film that lasted like this one, and I’m grateful this one did.
For Writers
Extended collaboration between performers and director can produce depicted characters through shared development that single-production approach can’t generate. The same applies to creative work. The contributor whose collaborative work develops across multiple productions may produce material that single-engagement approach typically can’t access.
The Vienna Setting
Linklater shot Before Sunrise on real Vienna locations: the Prater amusement park, the cemetery, the cathedral steps and the city’s streets. The city is a big part of why the film moves me. These are real places, and the camera lets them stay ordinary, so the night feels like something that could happen to anybody lucky enough to step off a train with a stranger.
The location filming approach has aged into a model for contemporary romantic drama that engages with documentary location work. The work makes clear how location production can serve romantic content when the underlying material justifies the structural emphasis. The directors who followed Before Sunset (2004) in Paris and Before Midnight (2013) in Greece extended the location approach across different European cities while maintaining the documentary engagement that Before Sunrise showed.
For Writers
Location production can serve romantic content when underlying material justifies the structural emphasis. The same applies to creative work. The contributor whose subject matter benefits from documentary location engagement produces work that engages audiences more thoughtfully than studio approach typically allows.
Craft Note
As dialogue-driven romantic drama, Before Sunrise addresses connection content through single overnight encounter. The Vienna setting, the Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy collaboration, and the dialogue structure generated engagement that critical reception has continued to engage with across the trilogy. Study it to see how committed dialogue approach serves romantic content.
Is Before Sunrise as good as people say?
By trusting two actors and a script to talk for an entire film, Before Sunrise changed what a romantic drama could be.
It’s a 9 because it feels alive in a way most love stories never manage, and because I believe every minute of that night. The only thing I’d change is a couple of talky detours that drift. Watch it before the sequels, then go straight to Before Sunset.
