Jesse and Céline forever: "Before Sunrise" at 30

Reissued this weekend to mark its thirtieth anniversary, Before Sunrise was several things happening at once. It was part of a post-Maastricht wave, unimaginable today, of films funded by the Castle Rock production shingle about the romantic misadventures of Americans in Europe, where it was preceded by Whit Stillman's marvellous Barcelona and followed by Billy Crystal's now mostly forgotten Forget Paris. It was the then-blossoming American independent cinema branching out, under the guidance of the ever-curious and open-minded Austin resident Richard Linklater. Most crucially of all, it was twelve or so life-changing hours in the lives of two characters initially encountered as strangers on a train, heading west from who knows where. In retrospect, it seems spooky that the pair's first conversation - sparked by a squabbling married couple in the same carriage - should be about the perils and pitfalls of growing old together. (Call it subconscious foreshadowing.) But they talk, and after they hit it off and disembark together for a layover in a sunkissed Vienna, they walk and talk, as young adults in major European cities and American independent movies have always done. If there was a twist on late 20th century romantic formula, it was that the guy, Jesse (Ethan Hawke), was characterised as the dreamier of the two, a surrogate for Linklater himself (co-writing with Kim Krizan), who'd undergone an experience much like this at a formative moment. It was his travelling companion, young Frenchwoman Céline (Julie Delpy), who would be characterised as the more pragmatic figure - though as she looked as Julie Delpy did in the summer of 1994, which is to say not unlike an angel in human form, she was also the kind of girl a guy might well get dreamy about. (Or so a friend told me.)

It wasn't new to make dialogue the whole shebang: the garrulous Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith had done similar, recently. What felt fresh was the sincere interest in the world(s) that lay beyond pop culture, and in places beyond American cities and towns. This was a film to counter the widely circulated statistic about the shockingly low percentage of Americans who owned passports; it could also be used to push back against anyone claiming Linklater didn't have much of an idea where to put his camera, that he was basically a man filming radio plays. True, it helps that Jesse and Céline pull into Vienna on a gorgeous summer's evening - which makes, say, sleeping overnight in a park less of a dampener than it might have been - but Linklater and Krizan's dialogue also serves to open up both the frame and the frame of reference: Céline cites the ongoing war in what were then the remains of the former Yugoslavia, while a passing encounter with a palm reader ("you need to make peace with the awkwardness of life") carries the leads and viewer alike towards the metaphysical realm. Linklater returned from his European vacation with a document of a particular place at a particular time: the streets, the quays, the trams, the bars. But he'd also arrived at a study of the people occupying this particular place at this particular time, and it was here that Before Sunrise began to work its specific charm.

Jesse and Céline felt like a new kind of screen character, possibly inspired by folks Linklater had ran into around Austin: bookish, but unsure what exactly to do with all their knowledge; socially engaged, but sceptical as to what good that did them; full of youthful vim and vigour, but only too aware of the short time any of us have on this earth. The casting was mid-Nineties hot but meant to last, not least because Hawke and Delpy had such obvious, abundant chemistry they could respond to one another mid-scene with gestures of their own invention. Individually, they could surprise and redirect each other, while ensuring their scene partner looked their very best at every turn of map and script; together, they could make this brief encounter seem real, special, magical, as evanescent as life itself. (Never more so than in their last scene.) The older the rest of us get, the more two things stick out. One: we now spend at least five minutes worrying that one or both parties have left luggage behind in some train or bar, never to be retrieved again. But Linklater intends these characters to be travelling literally and spiritually light, to be carrying the little-to-no baggage that is a privilege for many Western twentysomethings. Two (and not unrelated): we can see what an idealised vision of young love Before Sunrise is. Sometimes, the movie is actively dorky: intercutting that doesn't wholly match, non-starter conversational tangents ("This is a nice bridge"), Hawke's psychiatrist character. Linklater was young and finding his feet, too - though his closing montage was so masterly it would be taught in film schools for decades to come. More complicated and dramatically accomplished trysts would follow: Before Sunset in 2004, Before Midnight in 2013, their running flirtations and arguments already lurking in inchoate form here. These were Jesse and Céline's baby steps, this their debutante ball. It's still adorable.

Before Sunrise returns to selected cinemas from tomorrow.