This first installment of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, while charming, ultimately struggles under the weight of its singular focus, held for more than 90 minutes: the initial meeting and flirtations between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy).
During the course of one long day and night the two wander the streets of Vienna, sharing with us the discoveries, protestations, fears, and often pseudo-profound musings of young love overwhelmed by its own idealistic passion and determined to make a one-night stand into something more. The heaviness comes from this minimal action and its predictability and, sadly, from the city itself, which is given importance largely as a prop, a frame, for the wanderings and reflections of these two attractive youngsters.
At one point, while they toy with the tempting fantasy that their brief tryst will blossom into something long-lasting (lacking, of course, the fore-knowledge that this will in fact occur), Jesse talks about his fear that, like every couple, they will grow to know each other too well, each anticipating the others reactions, knowing the others stories, tiring of their partner’s mannerisms.
This is not the movie’s first example of Jesse’s tendency toward self-hatred and, as such, it makes the audience weary of him, even if Celine has not yet begun to do so.
Often Ethan Hawke does not help Jesse’s cause (Jesse, described by the Criterion Channel synopsis as “scrappy”) armed as he is with a studied array of well-worn facial expressions: the reflective; the impish; the daringly flirtatious or spontaneously unpredictable; the long stare of deep reflection.
Celine seems equally smitten by all the different Jesses, and her susceptibility and bemused smile become as mildly tedious as her beau’s boyish pretensions.
But then this is perhaps the point; perhaps this is the Jesse that Hawke intends to convey, true to the character’s self-doubt and insecurity, and perhaps Delpy’s reactions are on point as well. I won’t know until I watch the rest of the trilogy …. if I have the patience to do so.