Tango In Vienna -- `Before Sunrise' Captures The Magic Of Foreign Romance

----------------------------------------------------------------- Movie review

XXX 1/2 "Before Sunrise," with Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy. Directed by Richard Linklater, from a script by Linklater and Kim Krizan. Alderwood, City Centre, Factoria, Gateway, Lewis & Clark, Northgate. "R" - Restricted because of language. ----------------------------------------------------------------- They might as well forget about doing that major-studio remake of "Roman Holiday" and looking for the "new" Audrey Hepburn.

Richard Linklater has accomplished something that's so close to the bittersweet essence of William Wyler's 1953 classic that any official attempt to recapture its magic is going to look like an afterthought.

Set in Vienna rather than Rome, "Before Sunrise" follows the general outline of Wyler's film. Two strangers, a seemingly straightforward American male and a more ethereal European female, meet by chance and spend a few hours playing tourist and discovering each other in a picturesque European city.

By the end of the day, several barriers have dissolved, some secrets have been exposed, and an emotional connection has been made. The two are having such a wonderful time that they don't want the unscheduled detour to end, but they both have to get on with their previous plans. The idyll can't last much longer, and each must decide if there's reason enough to continue it.

It's a tricky structure, dependent entirely on the chemistry of two actors, the charm of the dialogue and the resourcefulness of the director. That's probably why there haven't been many "Roman Holidays."

Movie takes no shortcuts

It takes something like the skills of a great matchmaker to pull it off. Linklater and his actors, relying on long takes and uninterrupted chunks of dialogue to establish the characters, avoid the most obvious pitfalls. There are no cinematic shortcuts, no music videos to tell us what they're feeling, no attempts to provide false drama by having the couple "meet cute" and take an instant dislike to each other.

Everything depends on what the characters say, how they relate to each other, how ready each person is to accept the other's quirks and vulnerabilities - and the accumulation of their shared experiences over the course of just 14 hours.

Julie Delpy, who played the relatively thankless roles of the vindictive wife in "White" and the moonlighting prostitute in "Killing Zoe," is the woman. For the first time, she plays a three-dimensional character with her own thoughts and priorities, and Delpy never comes up wanting in the role. Indeed, she's entrancing.

Her character, Celine, is a graduate student, traveling by rail to Paris, who takes a different seat on the train when a quarreling couple drive her into retreat. Ethan Hawke is Jesse, the man across the aisle who seems to find it so easy to talk to her.

An American in Vienna

This is also his most fleshed-out movie role to date, and he brings a carefully judged intensity to the character, whose monologues sometimes recall Linklater's own philosophical ramblings at the beginning of "Slacker." There's a neediness about Jesse even at the start, when he takes the gamble of asking Celine to get off the train and spend a few hours with him before he flies back to the States.

Later on we find out why he seems kind of cranky, and why she allows herself to be drawn into his last hours in Europe.

Nothing they do in these early scenes contradicts the later developments; everything flows from the gentle hints we're given during that first meeting.

The supporting cast of European actors were all cast in Vienna, and they give the movie a feeling of authenticity that more familiar faces might easily have punctured. Only a closing under-the-credits song, "Living Life," with lyrics that overstate much that's been understated for the past 100 minutes, breaks the spell.