Before Sunrise

Rating: 7/10 (27 February 2011)

Before Sunrise, while the story is really meant to be taken at face value, in combination with obvious film techniques such as shot composition, lighting, and the changes from "real-time," to "created-time," certainly creates this wandering aspect, representative of the "Slacker genre," of film relating to Generation X.
The story being a simple, open-ended love story is an effective means of breaking the conventional strategies of story-telling (Protagonist vs Antagonist, conflict, epiphany and a decisive conclusion). The film gives the viewer a sense of the wandering, loose, flimsy, and sometimes clumsy reality of a date (even though this would be an exceptional date between two people) between two people who share a sense of being overwhelmed by their post-modern condition, where they struggle to think of or do anything original or particularly substantial. through the film having very little conventionally shot scenes, and very normal dialogue (which is unconventional in Hollywood films), helps with that sense of realism.
In any case, I was pleasantly surprised by this film, not thinking it will be all that interesting, but if you are a film-buff, it is not your run-of-the-mill Hollywood romance movie. It achieves a sense of realism with this ideal date scenario far more successfully than anything I've seen in the past 5 or so years, as trends are currently to create a fantasy that viewers can relate to, rather than realistic scenarios in any genre really (even the news is susceptible, nowadays).
I would give this movie an 8, however I think of it as an, "acquired taste," so I gave it a 7/10.