Review of Before Midnight (2013) by Manny C — 11 Nov 2013

The intimately beautiful and staggeringly good Before Midnight is made up of two things: talk, the sharp, stinging kind between two passionate lovers doing all they can to get the final word. And sex, from the cozy hugs and kisses to the carnal heat generated by a night of fleeting passion. Those are typically what make up a modern story about love, but Before Midnight takes it up a notch. It's the year's best movie so far, and it's subtle and coy about what it's trying to lay bare. There's nothing all that extraordinary about lovers Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy). They aren't gorgeous young teens, they aren't vampires or witches, they're not battling in an arena fight to the death. Their location is just as jarring to modern moviegoers: Greece, a place filled with ancient ruins. But director Richard Linklater, collaborating on the script with stars Hawke and Delpy, fill the film with bracing freshness and all the urgency of a first date or encounter. It's a film about nothing and everything, with dialog that singes the ears and laughs that stick in the throat. These are words that draw blood. Maybe you're Jesse, maybe you're Celine, or both, or think you're neither, but then you'd be wrong: Jesse and Celine are a mirror of us and all of our hangups.

Now of course we've seen these two before. We've seen them for the last two decades in two different films each located in an exotic place (first Vienna, then Paris, now Greece). Before Midnight marks the third collaboration between Linklater and stars Hawke and Delpy, first in 1995?s Before Sunrise and then again in 2004?s Before Sunset, two films that have Celine and Jesse engaged in a fiery war of words. It's a film trilogy that defines a generation, and Before Midnight, vibrant with humor and romance, is the very best so far (if they keep going, I hope they do).

In Before Sunrise, the two first meet on a train in Vienna while still in their twenties. Jesse is head over heels, but Celine suspects he has more shallow motives, 'to meet a French girl on a train, fuck her, never see her again and have a great story to tell.'.

Nine years later Jesse is now married with a son and has turned his meeting with Celine into a best-seller. On a book tour in Paris, Celine, now working as an environmental activist, shows up and finds the two have feelings left for one another. A lot of feelings.

Before Midnight finds the two in present times with Jesse now divorced. He and Celine live together now with two daughters in Paris, but have not married. While on vacation in Greece Jesse grapples with the guilt of being so far from his son, Hank. Driving home from the airport, Jesse and Celine find they cannot deny where they have now arrived in life, with Celine continually wondering 'If we were meeting for the first time today...'.

It's that anxiety that has the two fall into a row, which leads to some cutting, and often hilarious barbs. At a dinner with other couples the two share in a conversation on how love has changed in the new age of tech. This leads to an awkward night at a hotel suite on what is to be their final stay in Greece.

From beginning to end Hawke and Delpy are firing on all cylinders. The two are beyond superb, they know how these characters breathe and react, they know how one another breathes and reacts, and Linklater skillfully lets them take their own paths, finding the emotions buried between the sharp-tongued words. It's award-worthy performances in an award-caliber script, never letting up on the stings, but also tender to the reality of human failings. So far, it's the year's best.