Cultural Exchange: Before Sunrise
& The First Date Question That Could Save You a Huge Amount of Time
This issue of Cultural Exchange was first published in May of last year. It was one of my first ever Substack posts and, at the time, you could count the number of subscribers I had on one hand! This piece is still, however, one of my favourites so I felt it deserved a second outing.
This republishing coincides with Before Sunrise landing back in UK cinemas as we celebrate 30 years since the film was first released.
Before Sunrise stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as Jessie and Celine, two people travelling around Europe, who have a Brief Encounter style meet-cute on a train and then spend 24 hours together in Vienna. If you’re the sort of person who needs a propulsive story engine to grab your interest, this film is probably not for you. It is literally just two people talking. And yet, it is also so much more than that...
*There are some light spoilers in this that I don’t think will ruin the film for you but if you hate spoilers of any kind, I’d encourage you to watch Before Sunrise first and then come back and read the 10 reasons why I think it’s so special.*
I’ve also written this with little reference to the movie’s sequel Before Sunset, choosing instead to focus on this film in isolation.
1) The year is 1995. OJ is on trial, Blur and TLC are riding high in the charts, John Major is Prime Minister and Pogs are (for whatever reason) a massive deal. And yet, there are no allusions to any of this made throughout this film.
However, Richard Linklater and Kim Krizan’s decision not to reference the year it is set is not the only reason Before Sunrise has a real timelessness to it.
Take the scene in which our two lovers sit on a tram together discussing “what drives [Celine] crazy”: She mentions strange men in the street telling her to smile and that there’s a war going on (“people are dying and no one knows what to do about it”). She says that she hates how the media are trying to control our minds, labelling it a form of fascism, and talks about how she’s sick of people using tired stereotypes to put her in a box whenever she wishes to express an opinion. All of these things are so specific and yet so perfectly vague at the same time. And it’s incredibly sad that all of these things are still so relevant, almost 30 years later.
2) Ethan Hawke is so good in this film. But Julie Delpy is just brilliant. There’s not a single moment where I can see her acting. Of course, she is an actor making choices (excellent ones) but hers is such a naturalistic, nuanced performance that it really doesn’t feel like a performance at all.
3) Perhaps this next point is entirely due to my previous: Celine feels so real, so grounded and so genuine that, next to her, Jessie’s red flags are almost impossible to miss. When it comes to flirting, he seems a real expert. He’s also cynical and sometimes patronising. While Celine is willing to consider he genuinely saw his grandmother’s ghost as a child, he makes fun of her for paying for a palm reading and believing a man they meet by the canal could truly write a poem in just a few minutes.
In Act One of a recent episode of This American Life (823: The Question Trap), the producers explore the questions people like to ask on first dates, “the kind that force who someone really is out into the open, maybe even without them realising.”
One contributor, Jessica, confesses she often asks potential dates if they believe in ghosts.
She says she was once engaged to someone who had a different answer to her but she’d liked him enough to continue to date him anyway. Here’s the section of the transcript in which Jessica talks about how that went with This American Life producer Tobin Low:
Jessie and Celine seem to have the same attitude towards the idea that ghosts could be real. So, this could mean they are compatible by Jessica’s measure. However, based on his derisive response to the palm reading, I wonder if Jessie would be this openminded if he hadn’t been the one to experience a supernatural visitation once upon a time.
A bigger concern is that he is absolutely on the rebound and even confesses to carelessness when disposing of previous girlfriends. Will Celine be another conquest he never thinks about again after he’s done with her? Or has his rejection in Madrid truly taught him something?
It would have been so easy for Linklater and Krizan to make Jessie the perfect man. Instead, they chose to make him real. And, despite his flaws, Jessie is endearing enough to still root for him and Celine as a couple.
4) If you recently watched and fell in love with One Day, the gorgeous Netflix adaptation of David Nicholls’ bestseller, you may come to believe, as I did, that the director took a little inspiration from Before Sunrise.
You might even remember the scene in which Emma and Dexter lie next to each other on Hampstead Heath...
5) As previously mentioned, this is not a propulsive, plot-driven story. However, there is a ticking clock which brings a delicate tension to the narrative: We know Jessie must get on a plane back to the states in the morning. We also know he has no money, which means he can’t reschedule the flight or book into a hotel. Will our lovers establish enough of a connection before their time runs out?
6) The use of metaphor in this film is stunning. There’s a moment when Celine spots some billstickers advertising a forthcoming Seurat exhibition in Vienna. She talks about the first time she saw one of the paintings that features on the posters and how beautifully the people depicted almost blend into the background, as if the environment is more important than the people themselves.
Would Jessie and Celine have been quite so taken with each other had they not met under such circumstances and had the chance to have a 24 hour first date in a beautiful city? We so often take the shape of our environment, like ivy growing up and over a crumbling garden wall.
7) I have three favourite moments in this film:
The scene in which our couple listen to a song together in a private booth in a record store. The chemistry is palpable and it feels like it would be the perfect moment for Jessie to kiss Celine for the very first time. Hawke plays this perfectly – the stolen glances, the way in which his body delicately twitches as he attempts to either fight the urge or summon the courage. In the earlier scene on the tram, Celine tells a story about desiring a boy she felt attracted to as a teenager and being so overwhelmed by this feeling that, when he asked her out she said no. It had been easier to shut it down than to allow herself to surrender to it. As the music streams from the record player, I wonder if Celine is repeating an old pattern. As desperate to kiss Jessie as he is to kiss her but afraid of what it means to want someone so badly.
Our characters show tremendous vulnerability during a fun moment of role play in a bar. Celine asks Jessie to play the role of a friend of hers in Paris. She pretends to call up this friend to apologise for having to cancel dinner, explaining that she’s met someone special and thinks she may be falling for him. Jessie then calls her, and she plays his guy friend back in the states, even lowering her vocal register in an attempt to get into character. It’s funny and playful but, most of all, incredibly exposing for both of them. This is where both characters put their cards on the table and the irony of them casting aside all emotional pretence during a game of “let’s pretend’ is beautifully poetic.
Jessie asks Celine the most perfect question during the tram scene. A question that, if you love the movie Past Lives, will surely resonate with you as well. He tells her he’s been wondering for a long time how the reincarnation of human souls works when we have an ever growing population. If energy is neither created nor destroyed, then souls are also recycled, right? So does that mean souls must split in order to create more beings in the world? And if so, does that mean we are all just fragmented souls?
I discussed this with one of my most spiritual friends during a recent visit to Tulum, Mexico. He squinted into the hot sun and then laughed, as if he’d been asked this very question dozens of times before.
“Yes,” he told me. “We are fragmented souls but… that’s not as scary or sad as you may think.”
We talked about the concept of soul versus spirit, how we can still complete ourselves even if other parts of our souls live in Bali, Barcelona and Bolivia, and the idea of having a “soul family” that we gravitate towards in every lifetime.
Great art asks great questions and both Before Sunrise and Past Lives do this brilliantly. It’s up to us to contemplate the answers.
8) There is no sex in this film. But that doesn’t mean there’s no passion. Sometimes the sexiest thing is a suggestion. A feeling of... almost. A tension that never quite subsides. It’s exactly why so many of us love a will-they-or-won’t-they storyline.
One of my favourite black and white films is the 1962 classic The Big Sleep. It’s the ultimate film noir and stars Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, whose on screen romance followed on into real life. In the very last scene, the audience is teased with the prospect of a final and more passionate than ever kiss between our two heroes. And then – curtain! It’s frustrating. And fantastic. Because sometimes imagining what might be is better than actually seeing it unfold. So much so that Jessie and Celine even discuss this very concept themselves.
9) Because there’s no sex, we get something else.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not a Love is Blind “sight unseen” situation. Celine and Jessie are two very hot people and they both make it known to one another that there is absolutely a physical attraction there. However, the fact that they either can’t have sex (due to perhaps not wanting to do it in a public place) or they choose not to means that they instead achieve a beautiful sense of intimacy. An intellectual connection that feels closer to love than lust.
Can you really fall in love with someone in 24 hours?
Sure. When you know, you know, right? But the beauty of knowing, of truly connecting with someone on a deeper level means that you don’t need to rush a single thing. No mad dash to the altar or declarations of love for someone you don’t totally know yet. Because if it really is meant to be, those things will be inevitable. It’s about having the confidence that you will come back to one another one day, maybe even six months from now.
10) There’s a sequel. I promised not to talk about it in this edition so I’ll honour that but if you want to know what happens to these characters after we say goodbye to them at the end of Before Sunrise, there’s an opportunity to do exactly that in it’s follow up, Before Sunset.
Thanks for reading this issue of The Ampersand’s Cultural Exchange. Now over to you: what piece of art or culture would you like to recommend this week? It could be a TV show, a poem, a book, another film, some visual art, a piece of music… the list is endless.
Drop your recommendation in the comments and I’ll see you there.
With love,
xK
Loved your analysis! I recently watched Before Sunrise a couple of weeks ago, and felt moved by the chemistry and the pacing. I ended up journaling my thoughts on the film afterwards. I still need to watch Sunset and I will eventually get to Midnight. Thank you for sharing your take!
“Can you really fall in love with someone in 24 hours?” is a hell of a question that sparks even more for me about my beliefs and assumptions about love.