Before Sunrise · reception & legacy
1995 · Richard Linklater
How Before Sunrise has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It opened quietly in 1995 — a Silver Bear for Linklater at Berlin, modest box office, filed under 'Gen-X talkie' — and only became THE romance touchstone as the sequels arrived and each rewatch aged with its audience. What looked like a small indie is now the start of one of cinema's most beloved trilogies.
What's debated
The eternal fan fight: is Jesse a swoony romantic or an insufferable pseudo-intellectual you're supposed to see through — and which of the three Before films is actually the best one?
Its footprint
It's the template for every walk-and-talk, strangers-meet-while-travelling romance since, and the record-booth scene — two people not quite looking at each other while Kath Bloom's 'Come Here' plays — is one of the most referenced 'unbearable romantic tension' images on film Twitter and Letterboxd.
Where it stands
A stone-cold Letterboxd favourite and canonical 'first film to show someone falling in love with cinema' pick — the trilogy routinely tops greatest-romance lists.