Before Sunrise (1995)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Jesse Wallace	Ethan Hawke	½
Céline	Julie Delpy
Palm reader	Erni Mangold
Street poet	Dominik Castell

Review

Simplistic and by design timeless romantic drama about an American man and a French woman, both in their early 20s, who meet by chance on a train from Budapest to Paris and decide to get off in Vienna to spend one evening and night getting to know each other. Director Richard Linklater may not have a naïve outlook on love and life, but his film is definitely a proponent for purity as his two protagonists wander around Vienna talking about life in general – often with a hint of existentialism – and now and then bump into various odd characters around the town. The film's simplistic form is both its strength and restriction, since it makes so much rely on the quality of the dialogue and acting. And Hawke and Delpy manage to get an earnestness across, complete with real-life insecurities and clumsiness, that elevates Before Sunrise above the run-of-the-mill romantic drama. Still, Linklater's writing has its moments of tackiness, and the film, for all its proposed ingenuity and truthfulness, feels a little too much like Brief Encounter's no. 1 fan to be a really authentic representative for Generation X.