Before Sunrise by Mara Azcona

Before Sunrise by Mara Azcona

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.

María del Mar Azcona teaches Film Studies and English at the University of Zaragoza. Her research is about comedy, mobilities, cosmopolitanism and star studies. She is the author of The Multi-Protagonist Film (2010) and co-author, with Celestino Deleyto, of Alejandro González Iñárritu (2010).

Celestino Deleyto is Professor of Film Studies and English at the University of Zaragoza. His research fields include comedy, transnational cinema, cosmopolitan and border theory and film and social space. He is the author of The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy (2009), From Tinseltown to Bordertown: Los Angeles on Film (2016) and co-author, with María del Mar Azcona, of Alejandro González Iñárritu (2010).