Before Midnight (2013): Honest, Romantic, Emotional, Great

Brilliant. Touching. Romantic. Incisive. Heartbreaking. Intelligent.  Those are just a few of the laudatory adjectives that come to mind as I think about this great little film.

Before Midnight is the third film in what is being called Richard Linklater's "Before Trilogy." All three of these movies focus on the relationship between the same two people, Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American man, and Celine (Julie Delpy), a French woman. The films were made nine years apart – a circumstance that was not planned, but rather, fostered by the success of first movie, Before Sunrise (1995).  In any event, the trilogy allows us to witness the protagonists at different ages and stages in their developing relationship. When we first meet Jesse and Celine in Before Sunrise, each is just 23, unattached, youthfully beautiful, unformed, curious, and on the cusp of – but not yet fully engaged with – adulthood. By the time of Before Sunset (2004), when Jesse and Celine reconnect with one another, they are 32 - far more experienced in life, for better and for worse. In the current release, Before Midnight, our two lovers are 41, and in a very different relationship from what came before.

Indeed, each of these films explores a different aspect of romantic love. The current release may be the best of the three, and at a minimum, is the mature equal to the ultra-romantic Before Sunrise. 

In that seminal first picture, Jesse and Celine, young and attractive as only the young can be, with their whole lives ahead of them, meet on a train and strike up a conversation. Jesse, who has a plane to catch the next morning out of Vienna, convinces Celine to get off the train with him and while away the evening walking and talking. They flirt and joke, they ponder the future, they reveal themselves, and they fall in love. There's no action, just a remarkable, youthful, romantic verbal interaction (and physical attraction). Early the next morning they must part, she for Paris, he for the airport. Their final moments together poignantly illustrate Shakespeare's statement that parting is sweet sorrow. 

 

Before Sunrise is one of my absolute favorite romantic movies, right up there with Casablanca, without the complications of plot. If you haven’t seen it you should (unless you absolutely hate ‘talky’ movies, which it most definitely is).

The second film in the series is Before Sunset (2004).  [Spoiler alert – sort of: I am about to reveal what happens after the conclusion of the first film. It will not alter your enjoyment to know this, but you are forewarned.]  Nine years have passed. Celine and Jesse (now 32) have each moved on with their lives.  Jesse has just publishes a best selling novel – about a guy who meets the love of his life on a train, spends an evening with her, and never sees her again – and is in Paris concluding a promotional tour, signing copies of his novel at a Parisian bookstore. Celine appears in the audience. Hawke has very expressive eyes, and when Jesse spots Celine, the surprise and longing he silently evinces is a memorable cinematic moment.  Jesse knows that he only has a couple hours to catch his flight back to the States; but he just has to talk to her.  Once again, Celine and Jesse walk and talk, catching up on their lives – he is now married with a four-year-old son, she is single – and comparing their experiences and ideas about relationships, gender differences, life's responsibilities, growing older, and what’s really important. These two are still in love and both realize that their one night together nine years ago was the defining moment of their lives. But, of course, it’s much more complicated now.

 

Jesse keeps putting off his departure. “You’ll miss your plane,” Celine says. “I know,” Jesse replies with a wry smile.

In both of these movies, and in Before Midnight as well, Hawke and Delpy seems so natural in their conversation with one another, and in their interactions with one another, you'd think they were making it up as they went along. They didn't - every word is scripted. It's just amazing writing, direction and acting. Director Linklater wrote the script for Sunrise (along with Kim Krizan, his frequent collaborator), while Delpy, Hawke and Linklater co-wrote Sunset and Midnight. Linklater effectively uses long tracking shots to follow his characters as the two walk and converse; so it feels as though we are right there, walking alongside.  The filmmaking refuses to get in the way of the acting or the story. The connection between Jesse and Celine (Hawke and Delpy) is amazing; nothing is forced, everything rings true: their pain, their disappointments, their needs,  their love - expressed in their eyes and faces as much as through their words.

The amour that is reawakened in Sunset is, if anything, deeper and more revealing than the youthful inafatuation/connection portrayed in Sunrise.  In their twenties, Celine and Jesse fell in love, but the import of that magic was elusive, and the moment slipped by. Only later, could they appreciate how rare and exceptional it was, and what they had lost – and found again.

[Second spoiler alert: I am about to reveal what happens after the conclusion of the second film. It will not alter your enjoyment to know this, but you are forewarned.] 

The current (and final?) film, Before Midnight, takes place nine years further on. Jesse and Celine are 41 and look it. Both remain attractive, but life has taken its due toll.  It turns out that Jesse did miss that plane,  and our two lovers are a couple now, with twin daughters. These life changes have altered their relationship in many ways, of course.  It’s one thing to fall for someone you’ve spent a day with; sustaining that love and relationship over nine years is something else altogether.  And thus, Midnight is a very different movie from Sunrise and Sunset. Celine and Jesse know each other inside and out, their good points and their bad, their strengths and weaknesses. They’ve got a history, during which each has had to make compromises, sometimes painful ones, each has harbored resentments, jealousies, petty and not so petty annoyances.   Now, when they talk, it’s often about their relationship, and it isn’t all about roses and chocolates. 

A different kind of coming-of-age story, the new film essentially plays out in three acts. As Before Midnight opens, Jesse and Celine are concluding a six-week vacation in the Peloponnese of Greece (continuing the travelogue aspect of the series). The movie opens at the airport, where Jesse must say goodbye to his 14-year-old son, Hank, whose summer with Jesse’s family and friends has come to an end. Hank must return to the US, where he lives with his mother, Jesse's ex-wife. From the expression on Jesse’s face, the catch in his voice, and the sorrow in his eyes, it’s evident just how much it grieves him to do this. Five minutes into the picture, and I was already moved to moist sympathy.

 On the drive back from the airport, with their twins asleep in the backseat, Jesse and Celine talk (of

course), and through their conversation we learn a little about the last nine years, about Jesse’s sense of guilt for living an ocean away from his son, about Celine’s uncertainty about a looming career choice, and a little about the nature of this new and more pronounced relationship between the two lovers we thought we knew. They banter, tease, argue, discuss and make peace in a lovely, fluid ten minute conversation that is, by turns, comfortable, uncomfortable, funny, sad, competitive, conciliatory, wise and silly.  We are drawn to these people once again, even as we feel like we know them better and more fully than before.

The second section of the picture shows us Celine and Jesse with their friends. Here is another new dimension: previously, we’ve only experienced this duo interact with one another.  The scene culminates in a farewell feast on the veranda at the villa where they are staying. The group includes a pair of young lovers; a middle aged Greek couple; a recently widowed older woman; and their host, an elder expatriate English novelist, apparently a mentor of Jesse’s. It’s a beautiful setting and a scrumptious looking feast, and the wide-ranging conversation that unfolds is splendid. They talk about writing, the environment, sex, gender differences, death, life, love. This group no doubt is intended to represent the elements of Jesse and Celine’s life, past present and future – and thus about our lives, too.  Everyone has something to say, and, though it feels a bit overwritten in places, all is intelligent and some is exquisite. Celine concludes with a priceless impression of a bimbo sucking up to a guy (Jesse) that’s both cutting and hilarious.

Still, the best part of Midnight, and the earlier “Before” films, is the dialogue between our two protagonists; and the third ‘act’ of Before Midnight is just Jesse and Celine. Their friends have gifted them with a romantic last night’s stay at a luxury hotel (“we’ll babysit your twins”). They walk to the hotel along cobbled streets, chatting as they amble, never, it seems, at a loss for words. They marvel at how they’ve made it this far, speculate about how long they’ll last, on and on. As they do, we start to feel the tension and strains underlying their ease of manner. Just beneath the surface, there’s some serous discontentment, trouble in paradise; and sure enough, once they arrive at their luxe accommodations, the planned night of romantic love turns into a lusty, no-holds-barred verbal rhubarb.

Celine has been seething for some time, and she lets loose – magnificently. What follows over the next twenty minutes or so is by turns devastating, funny, depressing and affecting. As Celine and Jesse go at it, much is revealed; and watching them, our sympathies slide this way, then that way, before expanding to encompass both of them. It’s sad to see them this way.

At the same time, this is one of the most incredible, and incredibly real, arguments in the history of American romantic drama, and on that level, it’s exhilarating.

How does it end up? That’s one spoiler, I won’t divulge. But wow, what a picture!!

Before Midnight is currently in limited release nationwide. is now available free to Starz and DirectTV subscribers; and for rent on most other streaming services. 
Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are available on DVD via Netflix and elsewhere, or streaming via Xfinity OnDemand, Amazon Streaming Video, and VUDU