Before Midnight

Film (2013)

Directed by Richard Linklater
Written by Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Original Music: Graham Reynolds, Cinematography: Christos Voudouris, Film Editing: Sandra Adair

With Ethan Hawke (Jesse), Julie Delpy (Celine), Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick (Hank), Jennifer Prior (Ella), Charlotte Prior (Nina), Xenia Kalogeropoulou (Natalia), Walter Lassally (Patrick), Ariane Labed (Anna), Yiannis Papadopoulos (Achilleas), Athina Rachel Tsangari (Ariadni), Panos Koronis (Stefanos)

Julie Delpy as Celine, Ethan Hawke as Jesse in 'Before Midnight' — Julie Delpy as Celine
Ethan Hawke as Jesse
in “Before Midnight”
Photo by Despina Spyrou
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

The third installment in the Jesse-Celine saga begun eighteen years ago with Before Sunrise and continued nine years ago with Before Sunset.

Each of the films in this now three part series has ended with a Sopranos-like cliffhanger that has left fans waiting for nearly a decade, in each case, to find out what happens next.

Saying almost anything about this film – whether Jesse and Celine are together, and who does what – could spoil it for those who want to be surprised. Suffice it to say that one pretty much has to know that Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are in this film, so it should not be a surprise that the plot revolves around them. More than that, I will outline in the Post Viewing Analysis section below to protect those who want to remain entirely innocent of the surprises. If you do not care about being surprised, then, by all means, open and read this section. Before I saw the film, I happened to read a review that pretty much said what was going on and it did not ruin the film at all for me, but I saw the film with someone who had resolutely avoided reading anything about it for fear of having any surprise blown beforehand. By this point enough reviewers have revealed the basics of the story, so, if you have read anything about this film you basically get the gist of the setting. But, the setting is really only just that – the brilliance of the film lies in its iconoclastic style and resolute form of execution – so, personally, I would not worry about the surprise aspect too much.

For those who have not seen the previous films in this series, it has basically followed the two principal characters, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) from an anonymous flirtation in their early twenties (Before Sunrise) to a more full blooded romance in their thirties (Before Sunset). Now they are in their forties.

Ethan Hawke as Jesse, Julie Delpy as Celine in 'Before Midnight' — Ethan Hawke as Jesse
Julie Delpy as Celine
in “Before Midnight”
Photo by Despina Spyrou
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

The uniqueness of these films is their sheer, unmitigated textuality. In the first two films, the two characters talked nonstop as the camera followed them through the streets. Unusual and idiosyncratic, these films are a sexualized equivalent of My Dinner with Andre (1981) which captured a single, long conversation in a restaurant between two characters played by Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory.

I have found all three of these Jesse-Celine films charming, vivid and full of feeling, but they are certainly not for everyone. Some people will find the unremitting conversation a bore or a pretension. But those who thrive on the rawness and revelation of continuous discussion, probing, argument, flirting, teasing and jousting will find these films most enjoyable.

These films are, more or less, a sexualized variant of My Dinner With Andre (1981) mixed with a fictionalized couples version of the Up documentary series, directed by Michael Apted, which, in a sequence of films, has followed the lives of fourteen British children since 1964.

Direction, acting and camera work are all beautifully done. The crafting of the flow of action and conversation, especially with the long, continuous shots of walking and talking, must not be an easy task, but it is pulled off seamlessly. The acting seems so effortlessly natural that one wonders whether it is improvised, but apparently none of it is.

Waiting for another nine years to pass so that one can get the next revelation in this extended, high-class, sophisticated domestic narrative is a real challenge, but that may be part of the existential subtext of the whole project. Those who squirm while TV churns its seasonal gears over Downton Abbey or Mad Men could go positively bonkers waiting for Linklater, Hawke and Delpy to do their next installment involving whatever comes next – perhaps grandchildren and Medicare Part D applications. The demands of patience on the audience is a big part of this project, as much as it is on the characters who inhabit the narrative.

Post viewing analysis - contains spoilers

The film begins in an airport as we watch Jesse bid goodbye to his son, Hank (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick). We don’t know whose the boy is at first, but we soon discover that he is the product of Jesse’s first marriage which ended, after the previous film, as a result of his re-encounter with Celine at a book reading in Paris. After Jesse leaves Hank at the airport, he goes out to his car where Celine and their two cute, blonde, curlicue-haired daughters of about five await him.

It turns out they are spending a summer in a villa on a Greek island, where a noted author has invited Jesse, now the well-known author of several novels, and his family to stay.

Despite initial appearances of blissful, playful engagement, marital complexity lurks around the corner. After a long introductory section setting up the idealities of married existence through display of affections among multiple couplings, Jesse and Celine get a chance to spend an evening together at a hotel. There ensues a long conversation, and a bitter argument, between them, about marriage and its varied burdens, responsibilities and disappointments. What looked initially like a setting from Enchanted April (1991), the romantic odyssey about married Britishers on vacation in Italy, now becomes more like a segment from Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (1974). Strident interchange replaces cooing and gentle teasing, pressing against the realities of middle aged marriage.

The conversation is heightened, painful and urgent, and the relentlessness of the nonstop conversation gives it an intensity that other cinematic portrayals lack. A sense of realism and transparency radiates through these scenes, as one watches the transformation of a romance into a passionately embattled marriage.

Another nine years – ouch!

– BADMan

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