Anatomy of a Scene: the listening booth in ‘Before Sunrise’
Richard Linklater’s filmography boasts an impressive list of credits, from Dazed and Confused, his homage to the 1970, to 2014’s Boyhood, which was shot over a decade of filming in what is a monumental cinematic achievement. The director’s filmography shows a preoccupation with time and its effects; however, no other project demonstrates this more poignantly than the Before trilogy. The series began with 1995’s Before Sunrise, followed by 2004’s Before Sunset, before culminating in 2013’s Before Midnight.
Inspired by the dialogue-heavy slices of life depicted in the work of French auteur Eric Rohmer, the series follows a French woman, Celine (Julie Delpy) and an American man, Jesse (Ethan Hawke), as their relationship evolves over two decades. The pair first meet on a train and spontaneously decide to spend the night together in Vienna, walking and talking about love, life, self-discovery and death.
The series contains many iconic moments, such as the end scene of Before Sunset, where Celine serenades Jesse before announcing, “Baby, you are gonna miss that plane”. However, today we’ll be diving into one of Before Sunrise’s most memorable scenes: the listening booth sequence. The scene occurs 27 minutes into the film and sees Jesse and Celine share a private listening booth inside a record store. But what has happened so far? After meeting on the train, Jesse and Celine wander around the city, getting to know one another, bumping into a pair of men who ask them to come and watch their play later that evening.
By the time Jesse and Celine reach the record store, they’ve already engaged in conversation about life, love and sex, and a natural chemistry between the two radiates from the screen. Inside the shop, we see Jesse flip through records rather carelessly, evidently preoccupied with thoughts of Celine. He pretends to feign interest in the items around him before walking over to her. Celine expresses interest in listening to a Kath Bloom record, and Jesse suggests that the pair take it into the listening booth.
Once inside the booth, Bloom’s ‘Come Here’ plays diegetically as the pair silently listen to the song. For the first time in the film, we receive an extended moment where no dialogue occurs, yet so much is said between the two characters’ facial expressions. Whilst Celine listens to the song, which includes the lyrics, “No I’m not impossible to touch/ I have never wanted you so much”, Jesse fidgets nervously. Unable to look each other in the eyes – that would be far too intimate – their gazes dart back and forth, just missing each other. The pair crack small smiles as they acknowledge the tension bubbling inside the tiny booth.
Hawke and Delpy use their body language impeccably to convey the slight awkwardness and excitement of being around someone you really like. In this scene, Linklater solidifies their connection, and the audience knows that there’s something special between the two. Interestingly, the characters never give in to each other’s glances. Although it seems like the perfect time for the pair to kiss, Linklater withholds, saving this pivotal moment for another scene a few minutes later.
Thus, this excellent scene is a perfect tension builder, capturing the realities of young love unfolding in all of its hopefulness and naivety, and the naturalism of the moment is striking. Unsurprisingly, Delpy revealed (via The New York Times): “It was like magic — each time I felt Ethan looking away, I would look at him and vice versa. I almost fell in love with him right there, but then Rick said cut.”
Furthermore, Linklater explained: “That’s the only time I withheld anything from the cast. The lyrics were in the script, but they had never actually heard the song. So you can see them really listening because they’d never heard that yearning, creaky thing in Kath Bloom’s voice that’s so moving.” Hawke added, “It’s probably my single favourite take of anything I’ve been involved with.”
Watch the full clip below.
