Beautiful
- Before Sunrise review by MA
If you expect a film to have car crashes, murder, deceit etc etc in order for something to 'happen' you will be disappointed by this film. It is about something much more special and everyday - falling in love....and what to do about it. As such it will ring a bell for anyone who has ever taken part in and produced this sort of magic. It is difficult to portray this on film without trivialising it, but Richard Linklater manages it.
3 out of 4 members found this review helpful.
Torture
- Before Sunrise review by AF
Started ok, then they mentioned about spendng the night walking the streets of Vienna, I thought that can't possibly be all that's going to happen in this film ....... But it was!
2 out of 10 members found this review helpful.
Talk Now, Kiss Later
- Before Sunrise review by griggs
Two strangers meet on a train and decide to spend a single night walking through Vienna. That’s the whole plot, and somehow it’s utterly captivating. The magic isn’t in what happens—it’s in what’s said. The conversations spiral and stretch, touching on love, death, time, memory... and whether you’d still be friends with your 13-year-old self.
Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy don’t perform so much as exist on screen, capturing that fizzy tension between connection and caution. There’s no forced chemistry—they just talk, the way people do when they’re young, a little lonely, and unsure whether they’re in a moment or just passing through one.
It’s romantic, but not sentimental. Idealistic, but not naive. A film about potential more than resolution, full of “what ifs” and “maybe thens.” It doesn’t promise eternity—just a night. And that turns out to be enough. Sometimes the most honest love stories don’t need a third act.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Walkie Talkie
- Before Sunrise review by Steve
The best film ever made about love at first sight. Kim Krizen and director Richard Linklater get the screenplay credit, but (apparently) Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke rewrote the dialogue, and star as the twenty-somethings who meet on a train and spend an evening and nighttime walking and talking in Vienna.
This invented an indie-genre, though owes something to Éric Rohmer. The American is cynical and insecure, the Frenchwoman is clever but passionate... and beautiful. As the film goes deeper into their encounter it feels like an intrusion into the magic of their intimacy. Sometimes they just gaze in astonishment.
Of course they do... Julie Delpy creates the most adorable screen presence since Ingrid Bergman. By the fadeout, who isn't just a little bit in love? And she gives herself some amazing lines. The city of Vienna is heartbreakingly beautiful, but mostly a medium in which they readjust their emotional wavelengths.
When Linklater shows the empty spaces of the eternal city, now vacated by their human transience, it like feels more like the end of a favourite poem which is mysteriously and unforgettably true. The will they/won't they ending is sort of spoiled by there being a sequel. But heck, Before Sunset (2004) is even better!
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.