CHRIS'S CLASSICS: "BEFORE SUNRISE" (1995)

I did not see Richard Linklater's ode to teenage love and late nights in Vienna until 2004, the night before I saw his followup "Before Sunset."

Since that time, I have watched "Before Sunrise" at least five times, revisiting it over and again, delighting in the rhythms of its dialogue and spending time with Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) as if they were old friends. It's a film I immediately knew would become part of the fabric of my life. It's influenced the way I approach love and relationships, with the idea that connection, chemistry and depth are far more important than looks, shared interests or a common background. On any given day, this movie is right up there with "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" as one of my absolute favorite movies, especially when paired with its even more affecting follow-up. This movie, along with "Chasing Amy," is one of the great relationship movies and love stories of the 1990s. And, like "Chasing Amy," it's a great love story because it's about so much more than sex and emotion.

The film was not a massive hit, although it has its devotees. It's still, unfortunately, not widely known outside of film circles, Richard Linklater's fans and teenagers who may have wandered into it in 1995 looking for a good date movie and finding so much more. This film's influence can still be seen in any film where two strangers meet up and have a relationship that leads not so much to happily-ever-after as much as healing and strength. These movies usually aren't very plot-driven but instead have lengthy conversations in which the characters bare their souls and find comfort with a person they have never met. These films, which I call "fellowship movies," include the wonderful "Punch Drunk Love," "Lost in Translation" and last year's superb musical "Once," and make up one of my favorite subgenres of film.

The film opens on a train trip across Europe, and the first thing we see is a married couple fighting. It seems like a simple ploy to get Celine out of her seat and nearby Jesse, but I think it's intentional that Linklater chose this particular couple to be two who have presumably been together for a long time. It not only leads into a series of conversations centered around how people change after life together, possibly nullifying each other through selective hearing loss, but it's also part of this film's theme. Do couples who are together for years and know each other's idiosyncraties and habits have a stronger love than those who have met in fleeting moments of passion? Or is love at its most passionate when we are inable to see the flaws of another? What's the difference in love between a couple who has been married 50 years and two impetuous 20-somethings who have only one night to spend with each other?

Jesse and Celine begin talking on the train. She's a student who lives in Paris and is returning from a visit with her grandmother in Budapest. Jesse is a student from the states taking a Eurorail trip before flying home from Vienna. Initially he says he was visiting some friends in Madrid but later in the film we learn that he was visiting his girlfriend, who ended the relationship shortly after he arrived. Rather than face the embarassment of heading home, he's traveled Europe by train, lost in thought and mediation. He's a young college student, full of ideas and sure that he knows everything. He's cocky but also a bit unsure of himself--it's easy sometimes for me to dislike Jesse until I recognize my own attitude in college, where I began to question and challenge everything.

Celine's a bit more reserved. She's a feminist, but there's a loneliness--possibly even a neediness--to her. We sense that she wants to accomplish great things and yet also desires the standard family life. She rejects the majorities of religion but still thinks there's something beautiful in having her fortune told by a gypsy in Vienna. Both of these people are smart and likable, full of deep ideas--which is wonderful, since Linklater spends the majority of the film simply watching their conversation.

The train pulls into Vienna and Jesse makes a proposition: he has no money and is going to spend most of the evening walking around the foreign city by himself. He feels a connection with Celine and asks her to get off the train and spend the evening with him. She hesitates only briefly, so that Jesse can make a rather persuasive argument, and the two disembark. The film then follows them through their night in Vienna as they visit late-night cafes and clubs, spend time in the famous ferris wheel from "The Third Man" and talk, talk, and talk and find something developing between them.

Is it love? The movie avoids any declarations like that and Linklater and his actors wisely show the tentativeness with which they approach it. And refreshingly, the film avoids any silly plot complications or misunderstandings. Linklater is more interested in letting his characters talk and breathe, discussing the weighty questions we begin to wrestle with as we come into our own. Discussions about reincarnation, the meaning of life, men vs. women, the effect of our parents and the nature of time and death fill this movie. To requote the dialogue would be akin to revealing the plot in a thriller. There was apparently a script, but Delpy and Hawke create their roles so real that it feels almost documentary-like and improvised.

It's easy to dismiss this film as a series of inane conversations and certainly it is akin to Linklater's films "Slacker," "Dazed and Confused" and "Waking Life," in which the camera follows characters in conversation, sometimes weighty and sometimes frivolous. But watching the film again, I found that all these conversations were centered around themes of connections, the finite nature of life and time, whether love is truly real and whether couples can stay together for years and still be happy or whether happiness is found in the moment, with the person you're with. It's easy to think that the dialogue is too smart for these 20-somethings, but characters in movies always talk with more intellect than people usually do. Besides, there's an almost poetic nature to it and the film relishes the rhythm of the dialogue almost as much as it does the actual words. Anyone who has stayed up late in deep conversation knows that after awhile, it's not what's being said that matters so much as the actual cadence and soothing sound of another voice. There's a wonderful sequence in the film where Jesse and Celine are in a late-night cafe and Linklater takes a few moments just to showcase the different people talking. Most of them speak in foreign languages and there are no subtitles, so we can't understand what they're saying. But it doesn't matter; Linklater is setting up a wonderfully beautiful din in which we're taken back to all the late nights we've spent with friends and lovers, conversing over coffee and just enjoying conversation with other humans.

Yes, the film is smart, but it also has a wonderful heart beating through it, courtesy of Hawke and Delpy's tremendous acting. Thirteen years later, I am still confounded that they were not given acting nominations for their work here. They occupy every scene and have to be both perfectly natural delivering weighty and in-depth dialogue and also falling in love. They are masters here, with furtive glances, tentaive touches that suddenly explode into passionate embraces and kisses. Early in the film there's a scene where they are on a bus talking and we watch Jesse's hand move to move a lock of hair from Celine's face; he stops short of doing it but then Delpy matches him and moves it herself. Or take one of my favorite shots in all of cinema, in which the two sit in a listening booth at a record store. In one long, unbroken shot, Linklater keeps the camera trained on them as they listen to music and look at each other, moving their eyes so that the other person is unaware they are watching them. It is a perfectly natural scene; it's not played for comedy and there's no editing trickery to make it seem times or faked. It's simply two strangers suddenly feeling an attraction and unsure of how the other person feels. It's one of the most perfectly romantic sequences in film and I'll admit my heart swells at it.

Watching it again and realizing I'm older now and out of the age that Jesse and Celine are in this film, I find an even deeper appreciation for the way it portrays some of the foolhardiness of youth. When Jesse and Celine make the pledge on the boat to just have this night and to say their farewells at that point, there's a bittersweetness to it because we still realize how much it's going to hurt when they really say goodbye. When they plan on meeting six months later at the same train station but refuse to exhange numbers or addresses, we're hopeful of their reunion but also recognizing the foolishness of youth that says these two probably don't have a long future ahead of them.

But the film isn't really about happily-ever-afters or even about a long term relationship as much as it is about connection. One of my favorite lines in the film is when Celine says "if there's any magic in the world, it must be in the attempt of knowing someone, sharing something. . . It's almost impossible but that's not the point. The magic is in the attempt." How many short-lived connections have we shared with others, passionate and in depth relationships that last only a few weeks or months but will linger with us forever? This film is about the magic of humans connecting and in relationship. It's definitely not a movie about religion but I think the faithful will find something strong about the need for relationship and fellowship.

Two beautiful sequences close out the movie, one easily recognizable and the other requiring hindsight. The first is a closing montage in which Linklater takes us back to the places Jesse and Celine visited the night before. In daylight, stripped of our two main characters, they are not very special or magical. An alley, a founain, a park. What made these places special and so ethereal? Was it not the connection shared by these two strangers, whose time together should have never happened? Do our environments affect us or are we changing our environments? The places that hold special places in our hearts--are they because there's a magic to the place, or is it because we held a hand or shared a kiss in those places? There's also a heartbreak in those, as it hammers home the fact that Jesse and Celine are going their separate ways. Apart from their memories, nothing remains as proof of their time together except for an empty wine bottle and two glasses in a park.

The final image just hit me last night, as both Jesse and Celine fall asleep on their respective bus and train. There's a beauty to that, as I think it's pretty clear that they are going to sleep with thoughts of each other in their minds. But for anyone who has seen Richard Linklater's wonderful 2001 film "Waking Life," there's another meaning that might be behind that. In a very short sequence in that movie, which is a compilation of dream sequences, we see Jesse and Celine in bed talking about their night in Vienna. It's just a dream but maybe that's the point...they'll be apart, but they'll always have Vienna.

Do Jesse and Celine meet again in six months? Did they make their return date to Vienna? It's almost perfect if we never know; the answer, as we later find out, depends on whether you're a romantic or a cynic.And I have to admit that if I would have seen the movie before 2004, I would have been adamently against a sequel for fear that it would ruin the power of the original.

But nine years later, Linklater, Hawke and Delpy reunited for a film that handles that question perfectly. I was going to watch "Before Sunset" immediately following "Before Sunrise," but I realized that wouldn't be right. The first film deserves to be savored and the characters need some time apart before revisiting the sequel...which I hope to do next weekend.