Based upon characters created by Richard Linklater and Kim Krizan
Screenplay Written By Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke
Directed by Richard Linklater
**** (four stars)
After sitting through one underwhelming film after another in 2013 (with a couple of notable exceptions), you truly have no idea of how enthralled I am to have just experienced what is easily a triumph in the idiosyncratic film career of Writer/Director Richard Linklater. "Before Midnight," Linklater's third film in the continuing love and life story of Jesse and Celine, both exquisitely performed (and co-written) by the film's stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. I have often expressed that I am not typically blown away by movie love stories as they often tend to feel either contrived, tepid or just plain false to me. But in the cinematic year of 2012, I saw one film love story after another which rang with the bell of truth to varying successful degrees such as "Celeste And Jesse Forever," "Your Sister's Sister," "The Five-Year Engagement," "Ruby Sparks," and the extraordinary "Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World." All of those films now feel like warm ups to Linklater's soulfully excellent film, which elegantly and painfully charts how love grows, changes, stagnates, surprises, disintegrates and resurrects in one's 40's. For a series that has already hit its high notes, "Before Midnight" is the best entry by a long shot.
As with Linklater's "Before Sunrise" (1995) and "Before Sunset" (2004), "Before Midnight" is not an experience based upon a plot driven narrative but more as a slice of life, the capturing of one moment in time. When we last left Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) nine years ago, it was in quite the emotional cliffhanger as their afternoon reunion in Paris led to a moment of whether Jesse would or would not miss his plane back to his family and troubled marriage or remain in Paris with Celine, clearly the love of his life. As "Before Midnight" opens, we find Jesse (now divorced) and Celine at the conclusion of a six week vacation in Greece. Now a fully committed romantic partnership which has graced them with twin daughters, Jesse is still dealing with the consequences of his choices from the previous film as he bids farewell to his now teenaged son Hank (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) at the airport in order to return him to his Mother back in the United States.
While Jesse struggles with his responsibilities as a Father, his career as an author has sustained and satisfied him through three internationally published novels, Celine finds herself at a career crossroads as she struggles with the possibility of taking a job with the government. "Before Midnight" begins with the twosome spending a glorious afternoon in the company of friends of varying generations and their romantic partners and soon, Jesse and Celine find themselves alone for, what is seemingly the first time in a long time, and without the distractions of careers, children and just the presence of other people surrounding them, they are forced to connect and re-connect in ways that just might either bind them closer or unravel them altogether.
Where "Before Sunrise" was wide-eyed, romantic and poetic and "Before Sunset" was melancholy, bittersweet and unquestionably sultry, "Before Midnight" shows an unprecedented power as this film is truly electrifying. As with the previous two entries, I simply hung onto every word that was said as each film serves not solely as a document in the lives of Jesse and Celine, but all three films have also worked as generational "check-ins." Where Jesse and Celine showed obvious emotional battle scars in "Before Sunset," as they each looked gaunt and shaken, "Before Midnight" finds the twosome in the early 40's looking healthier (Delpy is surprisingly voluptuous compared to the earlier installments--and she has a topless sequence that is striking reminiscent of Julianne Moore's bottomless scene in Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" from 1993) and behaving in a much friskier manner (Hawke is surprisingly looser and funnier than in the past installments). As we see how the lives of Jesse and Celine have progressed, we are also forced to do just as much serious self-examination as these fictional characters and from the audible voicings of recognition that I heard within the audience I saw it with, as well as the sounds I made myself, Linklater, Hawke and Delpy have executed their work with masterfully perceptive precision with how long term relationships and romance itself works and survives--and often to very uncomfortable degrees.
"Before Midnight" could easily be broken up into three sections. The first would be Jesse dropping his son from the airport and the long family car ride to their friend's gorgeous abode Greek Peloponnese peninsula. The second section is the gathering with friends. And the final section finds Jesse and Celine alone through and afternoon and a long night in a hotel room where sexual passions and long held resentments collide in a sensational romantic showdown. What was so remarkable to me about the way the film is structured is how in the first section, which features a lengthy conversation (which plays out in real time and almost no edits whatsoever) between Jesse and Celine, we are fully aware with how much the twosome are holding back from each other, especially as their children are asleep in the back seat. Yes, there are some near flare ups but they are quickly extinguished and deflected in the ways that I feel all couples would recognize in one way or another.
When we reach the second section, where their friends are urging them to have time to themselves, and they will even watch the children for them, we see how Jesse and Celine quietly attempt to find ways to actually not find themselves alone and without the interruptions of life, where there is nothing left but time, space and each other. Linklater has brilliantly keyed into the truth of how when you are in their 20's, that exact openness was glory itself but now in your 40's, dark clouds loom on the sidelines threatening to overtake you. What was once freedom has now become nearly oppressive and that distinctive tension which just crackled on the screen between Jesse and Celine in the film's earlier sections just explodes in the dynamic third section.
Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy must be given equal credit to Linklater for the execution of "Before Midnight" as they have embodied these characters so completely, that it would only make sense that they would serve in their conception as co-writers. In regards to their actual performances, Hawke and Depy have such a natural chemistry with each other that we absolutely never for a moment sense that they are acting as they are so in the moment that the entire film nearly feels like a documentary. But that is the genius of Richard Linklater as a filmmaker, he never allows himself to get in the way of his own material. I am actually still smarting from the experience of sitting through Writer/Director Noah Baumbach and Actress/Co-Writer Greta Gerwig's insufferable and irritatingly plastic "Frances Ha," as they never allowed themselves to just tell the damn story at hand because they were so busy being self-congratulatory as they smugly pranced back and forth with top hats and canes extolling how clever they are. Richard Linklater never falls into this trap with "Before Midnight" as he understands that the comedy, drama, pathos and pain of the story of Jesse and Celine is fully inherent and he doesn't have to jazz it up with tricks and traps to make the film pop. The art of conversation itself and what those conversations reveal is excitement enough. Unlike "Frances Ha," this is a film that makes independent cinema worth championing as "Before Midnight" explores love, relationships and romance in ways that Hollywood is just too terribly afraid or just uninterested in pursuing.
Jesse, the self-involved artist/dreamer and Celine, the passionate firecracker of sexual politics are just an outstanding pair to behold. We root for them just as we are fully aware of their respective flaws. Jesse can fall into pretentiousness that borders on callousness whereas Celine's consistent doomsayings are just deep fears emerging as self-fulfilled prophecies. Their conflict in the hotel room unearths everything they have been holding back about themselves as well as each other and I deeply appreciated how Linklater helmed this section without any hyperbole and just let the sequence play out as naturally as possible allowing all participants in the film and the audience mine for that very sense of truth (sometimes uncomfortably so) that has made this series so endearing and celebrated. It is extremely rare when I can look to a film and see shades of the relationship I have with my wife for instance. In "Before Midnight," I just do not know how Linklater and his team accomplished this feat but I swear the conversations, outbursts, accusations, recriminations and resolutions felt so eerily familiar that is was frightfully easy to place myself and her within those particular surroundings, words and emotions. I dare you to not feel the exact same way when you watch this film.
How do you remain in love after 20 years? 30 years? 70 years? Is it possible for love and passion to survive that long? Will the very things that made us fall in love with our partner in the first place remain over time or will they evaporate, forcing pairs to either fall apart or just exist without passion through the repetitive nature of life as we age? Richard Linklater probes all of these concepts and so much more within this excellent film. In many ways, it serves as a perfect companion piece to several of his previous films from "Slacker" (1991), the seminal "Dazed And Confused" (1993), and the animated "Waking Life" (2001), due to the film philosophical leanings and conversational tangents. But his "Before..." series remains so, so special to me as they have grown into films that explore us as well as the central characters. I appreciate how he, Hawke and Delpy have seemingly grown more passionate about these characters over the years instead of just cranking a new film out without thought, reason, purpose and passion behind it.
Who knows if they will return to Jesse and Celine in the future but if they do, I will happily follow them anywhere, no matter for how long, especially if they arrive with the inevitable "Before Nap"! I serve that statement as an obvious joke of course, but I am telling you, without question, that it is no joke that "Before Midnight" is enormously entertaining, unabashedly romantic and sexy, visually splendid and so emotionally truthful.
"Before Midnight" is easily one of the very best films of 2013.
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