Review of Before Midnight (2013) by Prima S — 12 Aug 2013

It's LOVE in your twenties, and then thirties, and then fourties. From love you can call the first which seems to be grander than life at that time, goes to the one when you think you either doubt or master the term love itself, and finally to the one that prevails when your life [and your body] is no longer pretty. The "BEFORE" trilogy wonderfully explores them all.

What's called the "BEFORE" trilogy is the three movies entitled BEFORE SUNRISE [1995], BEFORE SUNSET [2004] dan BEFORE MIDNIGHT [2013]. These three movies are made possible by three people, the Director Richard Linklater, the Actor Ethan Hawke and the Actress Julie Delpy, who co-write the movies together [except for the first one where Ethan and Julie are only acting]. I don't really know how they do it technically, but all I can personally say for them is that they must be the best team in making a movie imitation from real life. You will feel connected to these movies. Not to the characters or to the stories, but merely to the conversations, which is a lot! So, if you're not a big fan of listening to what characters are talking in a movie, then these movies will put you asleep in five minutes, guaranteed. But if you have a keen interest in life [not only, but mostly about, love], then these ones will feed your hunger head and touch your tender heart.

Throughout the trilogy, the movies follow the two main characters, Jesse and Celine. A boy and a girl in the first movie, who become a man and a woman in the last one. That's exactly what they are as characters, no more and no less, simply male and female. What they do for living doesn't really matter, and even in their fourty with a son and a twin daughters, they're not referred to as a husband and a wife. It's interesting, actually.

One more thing we should aware about these movies is that all of them are made in approximately real-time storyline. In the first movie, it happens from an afternoon to the next morning in Vienna. The second one is set in around two hours of one afternoon in Paris. And the third one is within several hours of an evening in Greece. Yes, they're all located in those beautiful places in Europe. Maybe they deliberately compensate the high effort of your ear with a few beauty shots for your eyes.