Review of Before Midnight (2013) by Mike N — 03 Mar 2014

There seem to be two Richard Linklaters. One is the comic genius behind films like Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, and the forgotten but brilliant Bernie. The other a masterful auteur behind Slacker, Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly.

And it is this Linklater whom we rejoin this year for another episode in the nearly decennial saga of Celine and Jesse. 1995's wistful lovers, who met on a train and wandered Vienna talking about everything and nothing, became the ones that got away reuniting in Paris in 2004.

2013 finds them together (but not married) on a family trip to Greece (their two daughters and Jesse's son from his first marriage, who returns to America at the start of the film). As usual, they talk.

Long tracking shots capture talks of love, life, art and sex. The talk of the past, both ancient (the Greek ruins) and recent (how they met, how they fell in love). But unlike the last two outings we took with them (yet much like real life), time has taken its toll on the couple, and once they're left alone, everything boils to the surface.

It hurts to watch Celine and Jesse fight. It hurts more than most films, because we've been with them so long. We've rooted for them, we've swooned over their passion. We've measured our own love against the couple that came back together after 9 years apart, missing a plane to dance to Nina Simone.

If the serious Linklater has one theme, its the passage of time, and the damage it does to us all. His even more ambitious Boyhood promises a more direct examination of the subject, but its the ambiguous ending of his (hopefully more than a) trilogy which is both hopeful and haunting.

Because, to quote a Lincoln Center retrospective of the three films, "Celine and Jesse Forever".