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USA 2013
Directed by
Richard Linklater
109 minutes
Rated M

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
3 stars

Before Midnight

Before Midnight is the third instalment of films charting the relationship between Céline (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke).  Before Sunrise (1995) depicted their initial encounter as post-college travellers swept away on a wave of youthful romanticism and heady talk of literature and life and into a one night stand.  Before Sunset (2004) re-unites them. Jesse is by then a successful novelist married with a son and unfaded memories  of Céline, the girl who got away, their brief encounter of yesteryear featuring large in said novel.  Now in Before Midnight both have been married to each other for eight years and live in Paris. Céline has twin pre-teen daughters from a previous relationship but Jesse’s son lives in America with his ex-wife.  We catch up with them on holiday in, as we keep hearing, in the “Peloponnese” in Southern Greece.

If you’ve seen the earlier films and found Linklater’s essentially Nouvelle Vague-ish conceit of film as a gab-fest you won’t be disappointed by Before Midnight.  I, unlike most for all the films have been rapturously received, am less persuaded. Whilst I can appreciate the value in trying to capture the quiddity of the everyday Linklater’s films are not in the realist mode but rather are cosily buffed up with tasteful embellishments such as Céline’s conveniently photogenic golden-tressed girls and the “lifestyle” allure of the “Peloponnese”.  It’s all rather Woody Allen-ish but without the cracks.

If the first part of the film which has Céline and Jesse kick around domestic issues in a single fifteen minute take as they return from the airport is OK in establishing the banality of their loves, the middle section centred on in a multi-generational luncheon at the writer’s retreat the couple are staying at, a context which permits all manner of articulate discourse on literature, social media, relationships etc. etc. etc., feels too contrived.

The film does hit its straps, however, in the third section in which Céline and Jesse’s friends baby-sit Céline’s daughters and treat the couple to a night at a comfortable hotel.  What starts out as a romantic and erotic dalliance soon turns into a heated argument.  There is an immediacy here that is missing from the rest of the film as Delpy and Hawke capture the escalating temper of bottled-up resentments that only long-term couples know (they are just beyond their first seven year cycle). Accusation and counter-accusation spiral into ever more bitter recriminations as the pair drive each other into a state of “I can’t do this anymore” exhaustion. Delpy is particularly good here, seeming to dig deeper into her experience than Hawke in a performance of remarkable honesty.

Linklater leaves the story in such a way as to allow for the possibility of a fourth instalment. Given the strength of this latter section I for one would be interested to find out if Céline and Jesse will weather this storm.

 

 

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