The Sunday Times (London)
April 23, 1995, Sunday

Too cool to care about

Stephen Amidon

The slacker romance of Before Sunrise is not sustained well enough to convince Stephen Amidon.

With his first two films, the young American director Richard Linklater proved himself to be a master of significant aimlessness. His remarkable debut, Slacker (1991), was a seemingly random sampling of disaffected Texan youths that may have been thin on plot but was thick with telling atmosphere. Linklater’s narrative-free style perfectly captured a generation of kids who felt they had been left out of the story. Dazed And Confused (1994) was also set in Texas, though it skipped back to 1975, finding the slackers’ older siblings to be gripped by similar ennui. Although this time a story about a confused high school sportsman occasionally threatened to emerge, Linklater’s real concern remained with capturing the moods and manners of modern youth.

Now, with Before Sunrise, the director has taken his unique sensibility to different thematic and geographical turf. The setting is Vienna, while the large ensembles that populated his previous work have been boiled down to a more manageable twosome. Most importantly, formless narrative has been replaced by the oldest story in the book budding romance.

The film’s plot is simplicity itself. Boy meets girl. Period. It happens on a train, where a beautiful young French student, Celine (Julie Delpy) encounters a charming American lad, Jesse (Ethan Hawke). Immediately attracted, they decide to disembark in Vienna and explore the city for one night before Jesse catches his flight home. At first, the going is awkward they are almost overwhelmed by their impetuosity. Soon, however, they find themselves performing a sort of emotional waltz through the Viennese night that takes them to morning, when they must decide whether to see one another again.

The first half of the film is charming and assured. The scenes directly after the couple leaves the train are the film’s most effective, with both Hawke and Delpy skilfully portraying the low-level panic of would-be lovers struggling to find common ground. And when the going gets tough, the city is there to save them, for example, in a hilariously bracing encounter with two amateur actors or the poignant discovery of a paupers’ graveyard. When a sceptical Jesse scoffs at a fortune teller who predicts great things for Celine, their first fight is forestalled by the appearance of an itinerant poet who composes an ad hoc verse that brings the couple closer together. The whole city (and we in the audience) seems to be rooting for them.

Unfortunately, some time after midnight Linklater and his young lovers lose their way. After ably portraying those first tentative steps towards a relationship, the director is unable to push things along further. The couple runs out of steam soon after a sunset kiss atop the Ferris wheel that overlooks the Danube. The drama of anticipation gives way to the anti-climax of analysis. Indeed, within an hour of that debut smooch, Celine is already contentiously citing it as proof that the hard-headed Jesse is really a romantic at heart. Passion has slipped into history.

And so it goes until dawn. The impetuosity of their initial connection becomes lost in a morass of jawing (the verbal kind). They go to a club where they talk about past romances; they go to a floating Danube restaurant where they talk about the future; they go to a hushed cathedral where they talk about God. They end up horizontal in an isolated section of a park, though Celine balks, saying she does not want to become just another holiday conquest. For his part, Jesse assures her that sex is no big deal. He could take it or leave it. When, after considerable discussion, they finally agree to make love, Linklater cuts abruptly away, not so much out of discretion, you feel, as to spare us the sight of what promises to be some pretty tepid sex.

In the end, the director’s unique and undeniable skills are no match for his subject matter. The snippets of romance in Linklater’s earlier films worked because they captured those awkward early moments in relationships, where irony and affected lack of interest are not only defence mechanisms but also the slacker method of preening. The problem with Celine and Jesse is that they sustain these way-cool attitudes for far too long. They are ironic before they have gone the distance. They seem intent on exploring the implications and nuances of a relationship that the sun has yet to rise upon. Having taken the romantic plunge, they never leave the shallow end.

Linklater’s uninspired use of Vienna is indicative of this lack of commitment. It gradually recedes into the scenery, becoming a hackneyed backdrop of harpsichordists and horse-drawn carriages, monks and cathedrals, gypsy dancers and decorative fountains. One longs for more interaction with the city, for this likeable young couple to do something besides listen to the echoes of their own voices in the cobbled streets.

At dawn, the lovers return to the station, where yet another round of negotiation breaks out over whether they should see each other again. A return to Vienna in six months is agreed. But I don’t think we should hold our breaths. It is hard to imagine either Celine or Jesse making the effort such a reunion would require. That sort of passion and energy would be, well, uncool.