Before Midnight: The Art of Conversation

Before Midnight is the third installment in the series that began with Before Sunrise in 1995. In Before Sunrise, writer-director Richard Linklater introduced us to Jesse and Celine, played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. They meet on a train - Jesse is an American student on the last day of his European vacation, and Celine is a French student on her way back to Paris. They start talking and Jesse convinces her to get off the train in Vienna so that they can talk until the next morning when he has to catch his flight back to the States. The movie is just one long conversation between these two people as they wander through Vienna, and the next morning, as Jesse drops Celine off at the train station, they promise to meet six months from now at the same spot.

Cut to nine years later, with the release of Before Sunset in 2004. Turns out Celine never kept their date, and Jesse wrote a book about their missed connection. He's a celebrated novelist, and during a book signing in Paris, he runs into Celine again. This movie follows them through extended takes as they have a 90-minute conversation through the streets of Paris. Jesse is married now, but that spark with Celine is still there, and at the end of the movie, he's in her apartment and about to miss his flight back home.

Now, again nine years later, we have Before Midnight. And it is the perfect bookend to this incredible romance that has been unfolding over eighteen years. I don't want to give too much away because fans of this couple just have to experience their story for themselves. The bare essentials are that Jesse and Celine are still together and have kids. They live in Paris but the movie takes place during a day of their summer vacation in Greece. And again, they proceed to have a conversation that is filled with silliness, heartbreak, love, melancholy, and every human emotion in between. It's a rollercoaster ride and if you are as invested in this couple as I am at this point, you'll be on the edge of your seat, desperately hoping it all ends well. That's a hell of a thing to feel when all you're doing is watching two people talk.

After seeing this movie, I immediately re-watched Before Sunrise, and it's incredible to see how these characters have literally and figuratively transformed. But what is more incredible is how much they've stayed the same. Before Midnight echoes conversations that Jesse and Celine had during that fateful night in Vienna, and despite being grown-up parents, the two of them are still struggling with issues they had as young students in 1994. Celine is still torn between the feminist and romantic ideals, Jesse is still torn between acting like an adult or a thirteen-year old boy. It's fascinating to see how well these actors know these characters - Hawke and Delpy helped write the screenplays for both the sequels, which explains why I love them more than the original movie. Before Sunrise is a great film, but I wouldn't care for it as much if I didn't get to see where those characters ended up later in life. So much of their conversation is the sort of pretentious twaddle everyone spouts in their twenties (and the refreshing thing about these films is that the characters will actually call each other out on their pretentiousness), but what matters is the obvious connection between these people and whether their relationship will last.

Before Midnight is a riveting movie that gives these characters their due and proves yet again that a movie need not be much more than two people having a conversation. It feels like this might be the last movie, but nine years from now, if Jesse and Celine are back, I'll be ready and waiting.