Richard Linklater’s “Before Trilogy” Illustrates The Damage Hookups And Feminism Wreak On A Woman’s Heart

This question is at the heart of the thoughtful, decades-long romance depicted in Richard Linklater’s “Before Trilogy” – a series of three romance films with the same characters filmed across two decades. The story follows American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and French student Céline (Julie Delpy), whose tumultuous love affair begins on a train in Vienna.

Though each film is only a series of conversations between the couple, the films are riveting as we watch two beautiful and intelligent people first fall in love and then struggle to decide what their future will look like. Before Sunrise (1995), the first film, de-romanticizes hookup culture – and, unsurprisingly, is the most romantic of the trilogy. In the sequels Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013), each set 10 years after the previous film, we watch a future play out where Jesse and Céline miss their first chance to be together. As they deal with the aftermath of the mistakes they’ve made in life, we watch a cautionary depiction of the effect that hookups, girlboss feminism, and infidelity have on a woman’s heart.

Before Sunrise: The Cinematic Case Against Hookup Culture

From the moment Céline (Julie Delpy) first sits across from Jesse (Ethan Hawke) on a train from Budapest, there’s an instant attraction. They are headed in opposite directions – Jesse to a flight out of Vienna the next morning and Céline to her home in Paris. But when the train stops, Jesse asks Céline to get off with him so they can keep talking. Jesse is the intellectual skeptic, and Céline is a commonsense romantic; he pitches ideas, and she refines them. Before they know it, they’re wandering the streets and sights of Vienna, dreading the sunrise which will separate them forever.

Stepping off a train to spend the night with a stranger may seem outrageous and impractical, but the fanciful Céline isn’t interested in making her decisions based solely on their practical use. “You know my parents have never really spoken of the possibility of my falling in love or getting married or having children,” Céline muses to Jesse on the train. “Even as a little girl, they wanted me to think of a future career as a, you know, interior designer or lawyer or something like that. I’d say to my dad, ‘I want to be a writer,’ and he’d say, ‘Journalist.’ I’d say I wanted to have a refuge for stray cats, and he’d say, ‘Veterinarian.’...It was this constant conversion of my fanciful ambition into these practical money-making ventures.” Céline’s gripe is less with her parents than with the attitude that a woman must be solely focused on a career. By stepping off the train with Jesse, Céline rebels against the notion of the "girlboss" life which puts the dreams of corporations over the dreams of a woman’s heart.

Céline’s impulsive decision does not, however, come with an attitude of free love and casual sex. After Jesse and Céline express feelings for one another, they explore the idea of sleeping together – after all, they’ve just got the one night. Jesse describes a species of monkey that practices open mating, which he claims is the least violent and peaceful species. Céline knows what he’s suggesting – maybe “fooling around,” another term for sexual liberation, isn’t such a bad idea after all. “You know, I have this awful, paranoid thought that feminism was mostly invented by men,” Céline says without a hint of irony. “You know, ‘Woman, free your mind. Free your body. Sleep with me. We’re all happy and free as long as I can f*** as much as I can.’” Just as a woman is more than her profession, Céline knows that a woman needs more from physical intimacy than a set of physical desires being met.

The film’s setup really begs the question: Is the idea of a single night together ever romantic, or is one night only romantic if it is the first night of many to come? Jesse and Céline finally openly discuss whether to sleep together as they lay in a park in the dark hours before the sun rises. They have no plans to see one another again, and so Céline says she doesn’t want to sleep with Jesse, even though she has wanted to since she met him on the train. Jesse responds that they can see each other if they want to, and that if he had to pick between losing her forever and marrying her, he’d marry her without question. Each acknowledges that any kind of physical intimacy will be empty if they don’t have a future.

What do men and women want if they just have one night together, Before Sunrise asks? Turns out, they want the promise of more days and more nights to come – the chance to turn that one night into forever. The one night hookup for meaningless sex just isn’t romantic. What makes Before Sunrise’s indictment of hookup culture more potent is that the film was supposed to end with its protagonists never meeting again. Toward the end of filming, Linklater realized that writing Jesse and Céline an ending with no hope of reconnecting would fall flat for the audience, so he wrote a new ending with a hope for a future reunion. Not only does Before Sunrise de-romanticize hookup culture, but it does so by directly addressing the feminist attitudes that enable it.

Before Sunset: Hookups Harden a Woman’s Heart

What happens if that one perfect night doesn’t turn into a future together? This is the question answered by Before Sunset, the second film in the series. Nine years later, Jesse and Céline meet again, but this time, they’re at a bookshop in Paris where Jesse is signing copies of a book he’s written – a thinly veiled account of their magical night in Vienna. Jesse has a few hours till his next flight, so the pair decide to catch up on a walk through the city. 

We find out that the fairytale ending of the first film never came to fruition. Céline missed her flight back to Vienna, and Jesse waited for her in vain. Céline was at her grandmother’s funeral and has wondered ever since if he came back for her. Both look back on their night together in Vienna as a depressing memory because the future it promised never came to be. 

Most notable in Before Sunset is how Céline has changed – still clever and charming, but with a bitter edge to her monologues that becomes more prominent over the course of the film. She compliments Jesse on his book, though she claims it’s “too romantic,” which she doesn't do now, describing herself as a “strong, independent woman.” She’s now an environmental activist consumed by her work against “imperialist countries.” She “doesn’t want kids yet” but will someday. Céline has embraced the stereotypical life of the third wave feminist. 

But as Céline’s conversation with Jesse continues, it becomes clear that her outer busyness hides an inner emptiness. She chastises Jesse for writing his book because “It reminded me how genuinely romantic I was, how I had so much hope in things, and now it’s like I don’t believe in anything that relates to love. I don’t feel things for people anymore.” Jesse’s presence makes Céline realize what we see early on in the film – she has hardened her feminine heart, put a protective shell around it to hide the brokenness from never reconnecting with him.

But the real woman, the glimmer of her younger, more feminine self is there. “I always feel like a freak because I’m never able to move on like this,” Céline confesses to Jesse. Like so many other women in the modern world, her heart objects to the idea of moving quickly from one love to another. “People just have an affair, or even entire relationships…They move on like they would have changed brand of cereals.” Céline is tired of being dropped in relationships this way, like a lifestyle choice made in a supermarket aisle. She has become less vulnerable to avoid this emotional pain, but she cannot hide her inner self from Jesse, and his presence brings first her pain and then her joy to the surface.

The irony of Before Sunset is that in rekindling their romance, Jesse and Céline set up their future relationship on a shaky foundation. Jesse abandons his wife and his son to stay an ocean away with Céline – an ending that leaves us with justifiably mixed feelings. No matter how much Jesse and Céline seem to belong together, staying in Paris means he’s cheating on his wife and Céline’s acceptance is yet another sign her feminine heart has hardened. The time to keep Jesse with her is gone, but she chooses to do so anyway for selfish motives.

Before Midnight: The After Effects of Infidelity

This is the shaky relational foundation of the trilogy’s final part, Before Midnight. It’s another 10 years later, and Jesse and Céline are vacationing in Greece with their twin daughters, along with Jesse’s son Hank, who must fly back home to America in the first scene. Jesse is anxious to remain close to Hank but cannot bridge the gap that his decision to leave has caused between them. It’s a heartbreaking goodbye sequence, the first of many moments where Jesse must suffer for his infidelity.

Alas, Céline’s hardened girlboss heart has not thawed after being with Jesse. She is still a go-getter at work, prioritizing a potential promotion over resolving issues in her relationship with Jesse and their issues as a family. Jesse and Céline banter, but unlike before, their banter consists more of insults than interesting opinions. Their repartee is a loose attempt to cover up the tension of their biggest unresolved issue: neither feels that the other can be fully committed to their relationship.

The sparring escalates at dinner with their friends, where Jesse and Céline verbally jab at each other. Ostensibly they’re poking fun, but in reality, they are expressing their cruelest fears and opinions with a smiling face. As Jesse and Céline’s pointed cruelty to one another makes clear, trust issues aren’t romantic. 

Finally, the conflict they’ve been avoiding comes to a head. Gifted with a night alone in a hotel by their friends, Jesse and Céline resume the fight they began earlier in the car. Céline insists that she must take her new promotion, and Jesse thinks they should at least consider moving to the USA to be closer to his son. The fight escalates to accusations of infidelity on both sides – accusations that neither denies. “You know what’s going on here,” Céline states before storming out of their room, “It’s simple. I don’t think I love you anymore.” It’s not that Céline doesn’t love Jesse anymore, though. She’s convinced that all love is temporary and all commitments are breakable. Rather than be the latest one to be cast aside, she has become her most prickly and protective.

The film’s ending is ambiguous, giving us hope for a resolution that we don’t completely get to witness. Jesse chases after Céline, sitting across from her like she did him on the train where they first met. He pretends to be a time traveler from the future, bringing a message from their future, from their still happily married selves. He makes a stirring plea for Céline to give him another chance and stay as committed to their relationship as he is. But have the pair really learned their lesson? “Your daughters will become icons of feminism,” Jesse predicts, and we can’t help but recall the concerns a young Céline had about feminism’s effect on women. Céline chooses to stay, but whether she chooses to open her heart is left to us to decide.

Closing Thoughts

Sometimes, the best criticisms of harmful ideologies come not in the form of philosophical treatises but in a compelling story that shows the results of those beliefs. After the romantic beginning of Jesse and Céline’s story and the promise of a future together, the trilogy’s later two films show the effect of hookups and infidelity on relationships. As we watch Céline’s heart harden over the course of the trilogy, we see the permanent damage left on a woman’s heart when a relationship fails to consider what comes after.

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