Before Midnight
(USA, 108 min.)
Dir. Richard Linklater, Writ. Richard Linklater, Julie
Delpy, Ethan Hawke.
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy
 |
| Photo by Despina Spyrou, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics |
A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it, there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.
-Bernstein (Everett Sloane), Citizen Kane
What does it mean to chase the one that got away? Mr.
Bernstein’s nostalgic monologue in Citizen
Kane—one of the film’s best—is a classic ode to a kind of love that seems
to exist only in the movies. The unattainable girl on the ferry, the one that
got away, serves as a quintessential catalyst
in the cinema’s quest for happily ever after.
After the sunset, however, comes Before Midnight. The idealized lovers have become real ones, and
the man and the woman on the ferry have come together, had some kids, and
started a family. Life sets in, so Jesse and Celine bring to the movies a kind
of realistic arc that relationships take when happily-ever-after fades to black
with the sunset and the end credits. If Before
Sunset realizes the euphoria of attaining the unobtainable, then Before Midnight offers a beautiful
wake-up call that Bernstein’s girl on the ferry is just like everyone else. She
is flawed and she is fallible. She has hopes, quirks, eccentricities, and fears
just like any other partner one can meet on a blind date. Is it not, however,
better to see people for who they really are than to wither away like Mr.
Bernstein and live forever in a passing moment from one’s youth?
Jesse and Celine carry the baggage of their fairy tale-like
romance to Greece, where they’re enjoying the final days of a family
vacation. Jesse has just sent Hank (Seamus
Davey-Fitzpatrick), his son from his previous marriage, back to America,
and Hank’s departure stirs up feelings that seem to have been percolating
within Jesse and Celine in the years since Before
Sunset. As Jesse and Celine drive to their holiday villa with their young twins
in the back seat, comments made in passing become ammunition for divorce. “This
is how people start breaking up,” Celine says, as their endless quips reveal a
sense of mutual frustration that their relationship didn’t remain as idyllic as
the memory of their first night together in Vienna. They recaptured that love
in Paris—they’ll always have Paris, as the best Hollywood love story might
advise—but it simply isn’t possible to recreate such unbridled romanticism each
time the sun rises.
Celine seems to be in attack mode as the car makes its way
to the villa. Her neuroses, conveyed spectacularly with Delpy’s zany motor
mouth, amplify every disagreement into an argument. Celine, like Bernstein,
seems fixated on the past and she isn’t afraid to addle Jesse with insinuations
that she sacrificed her life so that he could fulfill his own.
Jesse, played coolly and sympathetically by Hawke, seems far
more pragmatic than Celine in wanting to smooth the fissures of their marriage
and make amends rather than make a break. Jesse, on the other hand, has
arguably appropriated Celine’s life in his quest for success. An author, Jesse
made Celine his muse while writing the book that brought them together in Before Sunset; however, he wrote another
book in the interval since then and he essentially re-idealized their
relationship into a page-turner for the world to read. Celine barely has to
vocalize her resentment for being placed on an endless train ride to Vienna, for
Delpy conveys her character’s humiliation in a toxic encounter with a
well-intentioned fan who asks both Jesse and Celine to sign a copy of Jesse’s
novel. With the mere stroke of a pen, Celine gets the chance to rewrite their
story forever.
The book signing comes in the third act of the film. It’s a
jarring turning point that brings the trilogy to its climactic conclusion. What
should be a romantic night at a hotel turns into a grudge match that transforms
Jesse and Celine into George and Martha. It’s heartbreaking to watch such a
perfect romance go sour. Celine is especially unlikable this time around
(mostly), but Delpy is a force to be reckoned with as the fast-talking
character, so one is never at complete odds with Celine even when her own hang-ups
seem to be writing her own fate. Anything seemed possible when Jesse missed his
plane in 2004, but the final act of Before
Midnight makes one question if happily-ever-after really exists at all. This
Before film is especially poignant
because it feels so painfully real.
Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy design the final act of Before Midnight so impeccably, so
naturally, and so honestly, that one is never sure whether the latest insult
hurled between the pair will be the last. Before
Midnight keeps the audience wholly conscious of the clock that is ticking
on Jesse and Celine’s relationship, but unlike in the previous Before films, Linklater elides the
audience’s ability to measure the time that passes in the story. Gone is the
real time effect of Before Sunset,
not to mention one’s ability to gauge the story by the level of the light. The
evening’s gone dark once the story takes its toxic turn after Jesse and Celine
watch the sunset. It’s impossible to tell how much time is left before
midnight.
Before Midnight,
in a way, feels like a continuation of the trilogy and like an isolated film. (Although
one has to see Before Sunrise and Before Sunset to appreciate fully Before Midnight.) As Jesse and Celine
walk around the ruins, debating could’ves and should’ves in their uniquely
natural, yet academic-like bickering, Before
Midnight plays less like a continuation of the Before series and more like a sequel to Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy. (That’s by no means a
bad thing.) Celine even makes a comparison during their tour to Robert
Rossellini’s Journey to Italy, the
great film that sees Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders reflect upon their own
decaying marriage among the ruins, which essentially served as an original
for Juliette Binoche and William Shimell to copy in the Kiarostami film. Before Midnight has a deeper aesthetic
than the other films Before films do,
and a greater sense of blending art and life. While both Before Sunrise and Before
Sunset have a unique charm of their own, Before Midnight seems more self-aware than the others do. It’s as
if Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke have found the higher purpose behind the love
story that’s defied many Hollywood formulas.
Before Midnight
keeps one transfixed and invested as one awaits the fate of a relationship that
has grown and blossomed on the screen before our eyes. Perhaps it’s the
honestly or the sense of spontaneity in Jesse and Celine’s quarrelling that
makes it so affecting and believable—the script and excellent performances by
Hawke and Delpy have the tenor of real life—but the fate of Jesse and Celine’s
relationship seems like an impending judgement on one’s idea of love itself. If
love can survive night like this, it can survive anything.
Rating: ★★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Before Midnight is currently playing in Toronto at The Varsity and
opens at TIFF Bell Lightbox on June 14.
