The 'Before' Trilogy

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by Lucas Hilderbrand

Type: Studies
Subject: One Film > Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight
Keywords: Richard Linklater
Publishing date: 2025 (November 13, 2025) (Upcoming)
Publisher: BFI Publishing
Collection: BFI Film Classics
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 112 pages
5 ¼ x 7 ½ inches (13.5 x 19 cm)

ISBN

978-1-83902-802-1

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Book Presentation:
In Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995), two young lovers, the American Jesse (Ethan Hawke), and the Frenchwoman Celine (Julie Delphy), meet on a train travelling across Europe and spend a magical night together in Vienna before parting at dawn. Filmed in nine-year intervals, the film's sequels Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) forge an unexpected trilogy brimming with longing, second chances and resentments as the couple meet again and build a relationship.

Lucas Hilderbrand reflects on the experience of falling in love with, living with and having one's own life shaped by the Before trilogy. Tracing the story of the films' production, he considers the contribution of the leading actors, particularly Delphy, to their screenplays. He offers a close reading of each of the Before films, considering the extent to which they operate beyond the generic norms of romantic comedy or melodrama, incorporating aspects of realism and emotional authenticity through their location shooting, long takes and near-real time temporality. Treating the films as time capsules of their respective historical moments, Hilderbrand considers how evolving politics and technologies impact or interrupt the characters' intimacy, while placing the trilogy in conversation with other films. All the while, he pays attention to the trilogy's subjective impact on viewers across its eighteen-year timespan – and its continuing afterglow.

About the Author:
Lucas Hildebrand is Professor of Film and Media Studies at University of California, Irvine, USA. He is author of The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After 2023), Paris Is Burning (2013) and Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright (2009).

See the publisher website: BFI Publishing

See Before Sunrise (1995) on IMDB ...

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