The Before Trilogy (Criterion Collection) 1995, 2004, 2013

The cornerstone of the career-long exploration of cinematic time by director Richard Linklater (Boyhood), this celebrated three-part romance captures a relationship as it begins, begins again, deepens, strains, and settles over the course of almost two decades. Chronicling the love of Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke), from their first meeting as idealistic twentysomethings to the disillusionment they face together in middle age, The Before Trilogy also serves as a document of a boundary-pushing and extraordinarily intimate collaboration between director and actors, as Delpy and Hawke, who cowrote two of the films, imbue their characters with a sense of raw, lived-in experience, and as they age on-screen along with them. Attuned to the sweeping grandeur of time’s passage as well as the evanescence of individual moments, the Before films chart the progress of romantic destiny as it navigates the vicissitudes of ordinary life.

Before Sunrise

Before Sunrise - Richard Linklater 1995 - An exquisitely understated ode to the thrill of romantic possibility, the inaugural installment of The Before Trilogy opens with a chance encounter between two solitary young strangers.

Before Sunset

Before Sunset - Richard Linklater 2004 - Impelled by an urgent sense of the transience of human connection, Before Sunset remains Richard Linklater’s most seductive experiment with time’s inexorable passage and the way love can seem to stop it in its tracks.

Before Midnight

Before Midnight - Richard Linklater 2013 - The conclusion of The Before Trilogy grapples with the complexities of long-term intimacy, and asks what becomes of love when it has no recourse to its past illusions.