Before Sunrise Review

Linklater and Kim Krizan wrote the script in eleven days, drawing on a night Linklater spent walking around Philadelphia with a woman he had just met, and the film keeps that provisional, improvised feel. Nothing happens except conversation: about reincarnation, parents, sex, death and what the other one is probably thinking. Lee Daniel's camera mostly walks alongside them in long takes, on a tram, through a cemetery, into a record shop listening booth where neither can hold the other's gaze, and Vienna becomes a series of rooms for them to talk in.

Ethan Hawke plays Jesse as a slightly insufferable young man who half knows it, and Julie Delpy gives Céline the sharper mind and the warier heart; their ease together is the whole effect. Some of the philosophy is sophomoric, which is true to people that age and occasionally tiring for everyone else. The best idea is the pretend phone call in the café, where each confesses through an imaginary friend, one of the best-written scenes in any romance. Linklater won the Silver Bear for direction at Berlin, and the sequels would make this first night look even better in hindsight.