Week 4 _ Movie Review

Before Sunrise

Han Byul Song 

Unlike typical romantic comedy movies that are full of ridiculous coincidences and predictable happy ending, “Before Sunrise” is a unique romance movie. Ethan Hawke plays an American student Jesse who travels Europe by train, Julie Delpy plays Celine, student of Sorbonne University in France, in the movie.

The movie starts with Jesse and Celine meet on the train in 1995. Jesse is on his way to catch a flight to America tomorrow and Celine is on her way to go back to her school in France. On the train, they talk about themselves and both feel something special to each other. Jesse asks Celine to spend a day with him until he catch the plane. Celine hesitates for a second but decides to spend one night with him in Vienne, Austria. Celine and Jesse walk around Vienne and talk about their love, lives, dead, and dreams. As the night settles in, their emotions to each other grow deeper and stronger. But they both know that they should go back to their lives when the sunrise.

  The reason I said this movie is special is because of its reality. While I watch this movie, I thought this might actually happen in real life. Costumes of this movie are very good because costumes make Jesse and Celine look like real people whom I see in the street every day. Usually, in the movie, actors wear fancy, pretty designer clothes which make viewers separate themselves from the screens. But Jesse wears one pair of jeans and jacket, Celine wears simple dress and t-shirt entire movie. And that actually make viewers more concentrate and focus on the movie.

 “Before Sunrise” is focus on scenes that catch sensitive emotion rather than beautiful and spectacular visual scenes. There is one scene that Jesse and Celine get in to the music box. They sit next to each other and listen to the music together. When Jesse looks at Celine, she pretends looking at somewhere else, and when Celine looks back at Jesse, he is looking at something else. They keep repeating this, and by the time music ends, they look at each other for a second and get out of the music box. This scene describes their sensitive emotional tension without any script or explanation.

 I recommend this movie to people who are sick of obvious romantic comedy movies. “Before Sunrise” is my favorite movie, and I watch it over and over again. Every time I watch this movie, I found something new from their conversation, place and background music. Furthermore, the ending of this movie makes me like it even more. Good news is there are sequels: “Before sunset” and “Before midnight”. So if you don’t have anything to do this weekend, I insist you to start “Before Sunrise”, I am pretty sure after you watch this movie, your mind will be full of happiness and love!