Céline & Jesse | Before Sunrise Trilogy

Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke managed to produce ’90s movie magic on a shoestring budget and at the mercy of Viennese trains and Ferris wheels. This beloved three-part romance captures a relationship as it starts, begins again, deepens, and strains over the span of almost two decades. It is the cornerstone of director Richard Linklater’s career-long exploration of cinematic time.

The Before Sunrise trilogy is a document of a boundary-pushing and extraordinarily intimate collaboration between director and actors, as Julie and Ethan imbue their characters with a sense of lived-in experience, chronicling Celine (Julie) and Jesse’s (Ethan) love from their first meeting as idealistic twentysomethings to the disillusionment they face together in middle age. The Before films credit the progress of romantic destiny as it navigates the vicissitudes of everyday life, paying attention to both the sweeping grandeur of time’s passage and the evanescence of individual moments.