Review of Before Midnight (2013) by Kenneth L — 14 Dec 2013

This film, the third entry of the perhaps unlikely trilogy that started with Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, is every bit as excellent as its two predecessors. It's kind of amazing that three movies with this simple a concept have managed to be as unique and compelling as they are, but somehow Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy just keep pulling it off. This movie does seem like a natural end-point for the series, but I would be interested if they somehow released a fourth film nine years from now. (I wonder what they would call it - Before 4 A.M.?).

The premise is simple and elegant: each movie shows us a single day in the lives of Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy). In the first movie, they were strangers who met on a train and started to fall in love, but parted ways with a promise to meet again in one year; in the second, they ran into each other again after Jesse had written a book about their one-day acquaintance. Now, eighteen years after they first met, Jesse and Celine are married with children. The movie follows the last day of their vacation to Greece, and shows how the years and work of marriage have worn on them.

Hawke and Delpy seem to know these characters extraordinarily well, and to have thought out all the little details of their lives. It probably helps that the two of them actually helped write this film and the previous one, along with Linklater. Linklater directs this movie with quite a number of very long takes centering on conversations between the couple; one shot in particular in which the characters talk while driving must last at least ten minutes. The combined effect of the long takes and Hawke and Delpy's performances is to make the movie totally immersive - you forget about the usual artifice of movies and feel like you're just watching these two live their lives. It all works at least as well here as it did before. The movie has occasional moments of humor, but they're never forced - the humor always arises quite naturally from the characters.

If you liked the first two films, this one does not disappoint. If you haven't seen them, now would be a good time to start.