Before Midnight (2013)
Starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy
Directed by Richard Linklater
The first of these scenes has Jesse and Celine -- who after the events of the last film are now a couple raising twin girls -- driving a car through Greece while on vacation talking about some of the more mundane aspects of their lives. This long take immediately tells the audience that Jesse and Celine have become much more familiar with each other since the last film's conclusion, with their conversations shifting from the more esoteric as we saw during their courtship to more grounded, based in reality-type dialog ("Should I take this new job? What about the kids?").
The second of these scenes occurs after a long day of meeting with friends and watching over their kids as Jesse and Celine have been treated to an evening at a posh hotel kid-free by their Greek comrades. Upon their arrival, the two want nothing more than to forget about their kids and spend the night ravaging one another with lovemaking. However, Jesse's fourteen year-old son who spent the summer with his father in France and then vacationing in Greece calls Celine to tell him that his plane home to the States landed in London. Celine says something very casual at the end of the conversation that Jesse takes as derogatory toward his ex-wife and this somewhat innocent remark causes the night to spiral out of control with Jesse and Celine yelling about how they've given up so much for one another, feeling like they've left part of themselves behind ever since they finally took the plunge and got together nine years ago.
Both of these scenes epitomize all that is great with the Before... series of films -- crackling, real-life dialog that never once feels forced or out of place, coming from a natural place of real emotion and story. Thanks to the performances of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy and the fact that we've followed these same characters across a unique twenty year cinematic journey, we can't help but feel we're watching a real-life couple deal with the positives and negatives of a relationship.
Unfortunately, the problem with these two fantastic scenes is that they make the rest of the film pale in comparison. Unlike the previous films in the Before... series, Before Midnight invites several other couples into the picture as Jesse and Celine vacation in Greece. (On the surface, I get this -- Jesse and Celine are older now with kids and their lives aren't strictly revolving around one another like the previous two films.) We get a particularly long scene at a dinner table in which these couples discuss the differences between men and women that pretty much boils everything down to the stereotypical "men think with their penises, women think with their hearts/brains" thing we've heard hundreds of times before. This is actually a theme that runs throughout much of the film's scenes that aren't strictly Jesse/Celine moments and it really makes it seem as if we're watching two different films. For a flick that contains this childish "been there-done that" base look at the Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus concept to also contain some of the most realistic and intimate looks at communication in a relationship seems oxymoronic.
Still, the final scene alone of Before Midnight is worth the price of admission alone and elevates the film (to a level it may not be worthy of being elevated) thanks to the stellar writing of director Linklater and stars Hawke and Delpy -- it's that fantastic. Although Midnight couldn't quite match the ease and charm of Sunset, I look forward to checking in on Jesse and Celine again in nine years as this original cinematic series continues (at least I hope that's in the works).
The RyMickey Rating: B+
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