There are many good films released around the world every year. Masterpiece celebrates the best of the very best: genuinely superb works of cinema that come with FictionMachine‘s very highest recommendation. If we had our own Criterion Collection, these are the films we would want it to include.

January 1995 witnessed the release of one of the truly great American films of the 1990s. Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, co-written with Kim Krizan, is a defining work for its time. Looking back on it today and it seems irrevocably hooked to its two sequels Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) as one unique movie trilogy. It is worth trying to separate it though. Linklater is one of the most significant American directors of the past half-century. While his earlier films Slacker (1990) and Dazed & Confused (1993) were both excellent, with Before Sunrise he achieved his first masterpiece.

Two young travellers meet on a Eurial train. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) is on his way to Vienna to catch a plane home to America. Celine (Julie Delpy) is transiting through to Paris. When Jesse spontaneously asks Celine to spend the day with him walking around Vienna, it launches a 24-hour romance from day to night and back again.

There is a wonderfully bold minimalism to Before Sunrise. The film follows its set-up without variation. There is no twist or surprise to complicate it. Two people meet, spend the day together, and then separate – likely forever. The film was shot entirely on location in the Austrian capital of Vienna, making the city itself something of a third character.

Without any subplots or supporting characters, Before Sunrise becomes a brave tight-rope act for its key creatives. There is nothing for the lead performances to hide behind. There is nothing to distract the audience if the screenplay is sub-par. Fortunately everything combines perfectly. The characters feel believable. Their conversations are interesting. Their serial encounters with random late night fixtures of the city resonate. The situation is unlikely, of course, but it is cinema. The whole narrative is desperately romantic.

What is particularly impressive is how the film transforms with age. I first saw Before Sunrise in the cinema, aged 19, and immediately identified with Jesse and fell desperately in love with Celine. Rewatched today, at a somewhat more cynical 47 years old, and both characters resonate in very different ways. For one thing Jesse seems stereotypically tiresome: smart but not too smart, if you get my meaning, and his strong ego and constant desire to impress Celine are obvious. What is more, with age and experience it is easy to see how patiently Celine tolerates his antics – ignoring them some times, gently mocking him for them at others – while still falling easily into a romance with him. Both versions of the film work brilliantly. Both versions were always there. This is a film drama that has become better and better the older it gets.

It is also interesting to see how the Viennese setting changes. The first time I visited Vienna I was 12, so in 1995 Before Sunrise was a source of much naïve nostalgia for a childhood holiday. The second time I visited Vienna I was 29. I had much less fun the second time around, finding a city clearly very tired of Mozart-obsessive tourists and disinclined to accommodate them. Watching Before Sunrise after the second experience lays bare the romanticism that underlines Linklater’s film. This is not the real Vienna on screen, but rather a magical simulacrum where the city is populated with colourful eccentrics and Jesse and Celine have a miraculous experience. Perhaps it robs the film of realism, but I know which Vienna I would rather spend 100 minutes watching.