ABSTRACT

This book offers a fresh analysis of Before Sunrise that reframes its romance within the contexts of transnational culture and cinema. The book highlights the symbolic value of the film’s construction of transnational youth in the building of a trans-European culture.

Engaging with the film’s critical history, this book focuses on its specific view of youth and young love. Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move examines young love within the cultural context of the 1990s in the US and its links with Generation X and the slacker culture. Within a wider scope, it also looks at the history and theory of romantic comedy and its connections with independent cinema. In considering the film a transnational text, this analysis underlines the parallels between a narrative of young love at the end of the 20th century and the construction of a young, or rejuvenated, Europe.

Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move provides an invaluable insight into this beloved film for students and researchers in film studies, transnational cinema and youth culture.

chapter |3 pages

Introduction

Out of the Past

chapter 1|10 pages

Youth Cultures in the 1990s

chapter 2|11 pages

Indie, Comic and Transnational

The Production of Before Sunrise in Context

chapter 3|14 pages

Falling in Love with Linklater

Genre, Realism, Quotation and Young Love

chapter 4|14 pages

Crossing the Ocean

From Regional to Transnational

chapter 5|18 pages

Europe 95

chapter 6|10 pages

Comedy and (Lost) Youth