Sun Up

Over the years, I'd heard a bit about this little independent love story called Before Sunrise that had been made back in 1995, directed and co-written by Richard Linklater (who made Dazed and Confused). Starring the well-known Ethan Hawke and the lesser-known French actress Julie Delpy, it's a movie about a young couple -- Jesse and Celine -- who meet on a train while traveling across Europe. It's his last night in Europe before flying home to America, so the two of them have just one night together in the city of Vienna to develop their relationship.

There's nothing more to the story than that; this is a 100% character-driven piece, and centered on just two characters at that. It even spells this out in the opening scene, by having one of the characters relate a story that's clearly setting the stage for the movie -- telling the audience that the film aspires to be nothing more than a character study of these two people. As such, this is a movie all about the writing and the acting. If either falls down, so will the movie. Fortunately, neither does.

The two leads are both excellent. Charming, interesting, funny, serious, and many other things in turn, the two almost instantly become a couple you want to root for. The writing is equally nimble. It's full of probing and introspective dialogue as the two characters have many deep conversations about a wide variety of subjects. They cover a lot of ground about relationships and general outlooks on the world throughout the movie.

But then, all this works against the movie just a little bit. Most of the time, it feels like it should all be a play rather than a film. While you do get to see lots of Vienna (including the same ferris wheel famously featured in The Third Man), the movie isn't really about any of that. It's really an intimate two-person play.

Still, it's a very pleasant and well made movie overall. I give it a B.