Before Sunrise: A

What is love? What is a soulmate exactly? Is it a stranger you happen to bump into on the street while running late to a meeting? Is is that fling you had back in college with that professor who so shifted your world that you've never viewed life the same since? Or is it simply in those moments when everything you are, everything you have, hangs on a few words from another person's mouth? Richard Linklater goes so far as to answer those questions and his answer is so powerfully romantic and winning that the very thought of it still sends me swooning.

The "story" is of two people: Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American, and Celine (Julie Delpy), a French college student. I use air quotes because there is little resembling a conventional plot in this movie. In fact, there are rarely any more than two people at the focus of the screen at any given time. It is because Linklater, in a bold and refreshing move, is conjuring a visionary film based solely on the conversation between two perfect strangers as they wander through the night-life of Vienna. It can't last though (Jesse has a plane to catch and Celine must ride back to Paris) but for those brief minutes they have with each other they establish a rapturous connection and we as the audience are invited to share in it.

Ethan Hawke, in a feat of off-beat brilliance, establishes the tone of his character from the first moment. He is a flawed cynic: he can't quite think that love is dead and yet he has witnessed it being shot. His nervous torrents of soliloquiy are an open door into the psyche of human being, not a caricature. Likewise, Julie Delpy sculpts a portrait of womanhood that is cleansing in its bright-eyed vision. And as they walk, banter, and quip together, the camera follows in long flows of movement. Though perhaps this is a stroke of defiance against traditional romance movies, nothing here feels contrived. It is as lovely as a dream (and so if it requires a small amount of belief suspension, by all means). As explorations go of human contact, there are few so natural and so insightful.

Filled with hope and whimsy, but never naievete, Before Sunrise is a beckoning from one man of exceptional skill to his audience. He is asking us to ask ourselves, what is love? He already knows the answer and by expressing it so seductively, with such fresh normality, he has delivered a glorious triumph.