Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 18, 1995                   TAG: 9502220017
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`BEFORE SUNRISE' HURT BY ALL THAT TALK

That proof is Richard Linklater's new film, "Before Sunrise," starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.

The fault does not lie with Delpy, the beautiful, interesting actress who played the horrible ex-wife in Krystof Kieslowski's "White." The fault lies with the script, written by Linklater and Kim Krizan because even if people do talk this way under certain circumstances, they shouldn't in a movie that is supposed to sustain our interest for almost two hours.

And Hawke's character, Jessie, who is no match for Delpy's sensitive, intelligent Celine, is kind of a jerk. The movie seems to want the audience to care about whether these two will ever see each other again, and I didn't, but for the sake of argument I would make this prediction: Celine will get back to Paris, tell her girlfriends about the sweet but shallow American guy she spent the night with in Vienna, and go on with her life.

Why?

Because of moments like these.

The pair are sitting in a cathedral in Vienna. Jessie laughs to himself and Celine prods him gently to tell her what he's thinking about. He says, "It's a terrible story and this really isn't the appropriate place to tell it ..." but then he goes on to tell her how one night, he and an "atheist" friend were driving around together. The friend pulled a $100 bill out of his pocket, pulled up next to a homeless man on the street, stuck the bill out the window and asked the homeless man if he believed in God.

The homeless man thought for a moment and said, "Yes, I do."

Jessie: My friend said, `Wrong answer,' and we took off.

Celine: That's mean, no?

Jessie (stretching his arms out along the tops of the pews and smiling): Yeah, it's mean.

Or this line, from early in the film. The subject of love has come up and Jessie has this to say: "Love ... I mean, I don't know, you know?"

What worked for Linklater in "Slacker" was its short attention span. The camera is daisy-chained from one set of characters to another, never staying in one place long enough to risk boredom. "Dazed and Confused," though more structured and conventional in style, also worked with a large cast of characters, some of whom were interesting enough to make up for those who weren't.

"Before Sunrise" offers us just Celine and Jessie, who have met on a train and decided to spend an evening together in Vienna before going their separate ways. If their conversation had real intensity, if one of them, say, had real trouble back home or was working out some complex psychological problem, the movie might have worked.

Sadly, the film's most interesting moment occurs very early, and it is vintage Linklater. Celine and Jessie have just left the train station and are trying to decide how to spend their day. They stop and ask two men standing on a bridge, and the conversation is weird and funny. The men invite Jessie and Celine to come see them in a play that evening. It's about a cow. But there's no real cow on stage.

"Okay, I'm the cow," one man confesses, demonstrating how he holds a cigarette in his hoof.

But Celine and Jessie never see the play, which is too bad, because it certainly promised more entertainment than "Before Sunrise" ever delivers.

Before Sunrise

** A Columbia Pictures-Castlerock Entertainment release showing at The Grandin Theatre. Rated R, 102 mins.