Written by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke
Ethan Hawke Jessie
Julie Delpy Celine
I won't lie. The write ups taking Richard Linklater's "Before Midnight" to task for being a bit talky are true. There are moments sprinkled throughout the film in which you want to yell "cut" because Richard Linklater seems to enamored with the characters he helped to create in Jessie and Celine. Nothing is more indicative of this then the scene between Jessie (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) in the last act when Celine finally expresses her disenchantment with her seemingly fairy tale romance. Again, there could've been a point where director Richard Linklater could've yelled cut. There's a point where Celine walks out the door and you feel like the scene has reached its pitch. And then she comes back and she walks out and she comes back until the scene feels like its belaboring its point about the mounting friction between Jessie and Celine. But for all of his seeming inability to let go of Jessie and Celine, Linklater handles the last sequence of the film rather beautifully with nothing more than a slow pan out. Indeed, the ending sequence of the film is beautiful in its own way; a slow pan out on Jessie and Celine in mid conversation. You have to applaud director Richard Linklater for resisting the urge not to wrap everything in a neat little package like one of those cutesy rom coms. But he knows, like we do, that Celine and Jessie deserve better than a director or a screenplay looking for easy solutions.
Plot: Eighteen years ago Jessie (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) met on a train in Europe. A few years later, they reconnected in Paris after vowing to find one another again at some point. Before Midnight opens with Jessie and Celine as a married couple trying to navigate the pitfalls of a relationship slowly starting to show its age. Jessie has used his love affair with Celine and the subsequent beginning of it as a path to live his dream as a writer, much to Celine's dismay. Also complicating matters is Jessie's ex wife in Chicago and the joint custody issue that has him thinking about uprooting his life with Celine to be closer to his son. This isn't exactly what Celine wants to hear, since her dream job is calling her in Paris. I'll stop there, you can decipher the rest of the plot on your own.
I've heard certain reviews that have called out "Before Midnight" for not being truly about anything; for being a pretentious artistic vanity exercise. I would say, it's not nearly as pretentious as the second film, "Before Sunset." If anything, "Before Midnight" is about moments. Moments like the speech that one of the older dinner guests makes at the party to welcome Celine and Jesse. If you've ever loved someone oh so deeply or you've ever lost someone, the words in that speech can't help but to touch your heart on some level. What I've enjoyed about the three films Linklater and Hawke and Delpy have done together is their unwillingness to talk down to the audience at any point. This is more than evident by the fact that the screenplay by Hawke, Delpy, and Linklater, doesn't treat the simmering tension between Celine and Jessie with the "blinking light" approach that most other films would ultimately take. The difference between a film like "Before Midnight" and every other recycled rom com about a fraying relationship is the fact that Jessie and Celine aren't plot points. They aren't positioned to feel certain things at certain points at the whim of the plot. It's beautiful and almost tragic in a way, watching the familiarity that both Jessie and Celine have with one another turn inward on it self as it threatens to divide them. I can't say this is the best of the film of the year but it's darn close. What it is is a testament to thoughtful writing. What it is, is a brave film that wants to be about SOMETHING. For all of the naysayers, I ask you this? How can you look down upon a film that actually takes the time to care about its characters and actually KNOW its characters. The film isn't slow because of vanity and or artistic pretension. It's a measured character study and sometimes, you just have to slow down to see the good stuff.
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