Before Sunrise

‘A long day’s journey into the dawn: an American man and a French woman meet on the train from Budapest to Vienna and have 24 hours to spend together. What they experience is an affair with a fixed expiry date. With Slacker and Dazed and Confused, Linklater has become the portraitist of Generation X – those people for whom the world is less a matter of will than of imagination. In Before Sunrise, he is more interested in the things that connect this generation with earlier ones than in what sets them apart. It is no coincidence that the film is dedicated to his grandparents. Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke give this story a form, but it is the city of Vienna that truly breathes life into it. Linklater is less interested in the city’s distinctive character than in the interchangeable topography of the metropolis. He succeeds – and in this he is thoroughly American – in capturing the familiar whilst still casting his own unique perspective on it. Thus Vienna becomes an enchanted place, a hall of mirrors, a maze, a wonderland.” (Michael Althen, Austrian Film Museum, June 2007)