Eat your heart out Jack and Rose. Thanks for playing Harry and Sally. Even Rick and Isla can take a back seat. All of these great and iconic movie couples (from Titanic, When Harry Met Sally and Casablanca, if you didn’t know) are not able to live up to the greatest movie couple in big screen history: Jesse & Celine, played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, in Before Sunrise and its sequels, Before Sunset and Before Midnight.
2025 marks the 30th anniversary of Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater’s simple but beloved romance movie. It centers on Jesse, an American, and Celine, a Parisian, who meet on a train and decide to spend the evening together in Vienna before going their separate ways. The movie follows them as they talk, listen to Kath Bloom albums and explore the Austrian city until they have to catch their trains the next morning. As they get ready to part, they make a promise to meet again in Vienna in six months.
It would take nine years for movie fans to find out what happened, as a sequel Before Sunset came out in 2004, reuniting Jesse & Celine. We’d then check back in with the couple nearly 20 years after they first met with 2013’s Before Midnight. Over these three decades they became something that few movie couples have achieved before — a real, relatable couple simply living their lives (albeit against some of the most iconic European backdrops).
Sure, the whole thing started off with an unlikely kickstart to the relationship like so many on-screen romances, as Jesse suggests Celine gets off and spends the day with him even though they've known each other for all of 15 minutes. But the movie fully acknowledges how crazy that is a few times, helping to keep things grounded. The rest of the movie is basically a first date, they walk and talk as they get to know each other, a little cautious around each other as they begin to form real feelings.
It is here that Hawke, Delpy and Linklater must be praised. In addition to the great chemistry of Hawke and Delpy that make you believe in their quick connection, the work they did in creating these characters is collaboration at its best.
According to lore, Linklater based the idea on his own experience walking with a woman throughout Philadelphia. While the germ of the story came from Linklater, Hawke and Delpy each contributed to the script with things they wanted to talk about and little moments they believed felt more honest (though they are not credited as screenwriters on Before Sunrise, that changed with the sequels as a similar process was repeated). For Hawke, that included his feeling of intimidation around Delpy when Jesse says he “thought everything I said sounded so stupid.” Delpy, meanwhile, came up with the idea for a mock phone call with her friend. All of this just added to the richness and natural feel of the characters, as they each had their own hand in developing them and the pair’s relationship.
The ending of Before Sunrise also contributes to the relationship’s (and movie’s) realism. The movie was shot in chronological order, and throughout the team went back and forth on whether or not Jesse and Celine should try and continue their relationship or commit to the idea that they never see each other again. As Linklater told the New York Times, they were up until 3 am on the last day of shooting writing the final scene, but they ended it perfectly. Not by these two shirking everything in their lives and figuring out how to be together forever, but with an uncertain promise and not knowing whether things are actually going to work out.
Thankfully, this story did continue, catching up with these characters in nine year intervals. And each time they meet up they focus on different parts of life. From the joys and grand ideas of their youthful 20s in Before Sunrise to the realization that life/love isn’t what they thought it would be (or that their experience wasn’t exactly what they remembered) in Before Sunset to the realities of a marriage and what it takes to stay together in Before Midnight. It’s not the stuff of your typical Hollywood romance, but it is perhaps the closest depiction of a real relationship this side of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes of a Marriage.
But this relationship isn’t just great because it feels real, it’s great because we love these characters and we want them to be together. While I never need to see a fourth movie checking in with Jesse and Celine, if you told me right now that Linklater, Hawke and Delpy were reuniting for another Before movie, I would be there on opening night. I have full faith that it would work, not just because of the trio’s talent for creating these stories, but because I believe in this couple’s love story and know without a doubt that they are romance that will last beyond the happily ever after.
I wouldn’t suggest that anyone model their real-life relationship after a movie couple, but if there was one to pick it probably would be Jesse and Celine, the greatest movie couple we’ve ever seen.
Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight are available to rent via digital on-demand platforms in the US and UK.
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