Before Midnight (***1/4)

Among 2004’s least likely sequels was Before Sunset, a nine-years-later reuniting of Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke), the couple who shared one intense night together in Vienna in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise. The ending of that movie — spoiler! — left it ambiguous as to whether the couple would stay together. Right on schedule, nine more years having passed, this movie tells us that what we wanted to happen did. (Incidentally, having seen the other two is not a prerequisite to this film, which deftly fills in the relevant details. The screenplay is credited to Linklater as well as the two leads)

There are, more or less, four acts. First is the car ride, after Jesse, a writer, leaves his son at the airport. We quickly learn that that the son lives in Chicago with his mother, that Jesse and his ex have a bad relationship, and that the airport is in Greece, where Jesse and Celine continue vacationing with their twin daughters, who are conveniently sleeping for most of part one, leaving their parents to chat.  Just like the other installments, the movie is all talk, little action, so they chat a lot. They live in Paris, so Jesse laments that he can only see his son in summer. Is he  just feeling guilty, or guilt tripping Celine?

The difference between the first two movies is that, even when Jesse and Celine disagreed, the discussion was hypothetical, philosophical. Act two, in which they discuss love and sex with the literary types they’re staying with, is much in this mode. Act three finds the couple exploring (so, some nice scenery of ancient ruins and architecture), but mostly talking, including the light-yet-heavy subject of whether they would be attracted to each other if they’d just met.

The minor spat of the beginning becomes the seed of the more intense final act, which is most different from anything in the other two movies, just as the idealization of a brief encounter is different from a relationship.  I didn’t mind that, and in fact liked the last part best, having been a little anxious for the discussion to get where it was going before that. However, I did think that I might have preferred that the couple’s disagreement be of the sort that could be blamed equally on either party. In fact, I think most people will think one is more at fault.

In any case. this installment lacks the fairy tale quality of the other films. But it has the same verisimilitude that makes these people seem like a real couple, though Hawke’s edgy vibe is different from Delpy’s cool one. So, I’m marking my calendar for 2022, in case Linklater and his two leads decide that Celine and Jesse aren’t done talking.

IMDb link