Once in a while you come across one of those special films that tackle important subjects with fierce passion. Richard Linklater’s three films Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and now Before Midnight (2013) all tackle the issue of romance. Granted this overarching, exalted idea of ‘romance’ evolves over the course of three films into a real pondering over the nature of long-lasting relationships; still, I would say that the three main writers do have a palpable, quite touching belief in the true possibility of romance over the course of a single relationship, however intermittent and difficult to maintain.
Perhaps what is so special about these films, in addition to their real, unaffected charm, is the incredible collaboration between the director, Linklater, and his two actors, Julie Delpy, who plays Celine, and Ethan Hawke, who plays Jesse. Delpy and Hawke have worked with Linklater on writing the latter two of the seemingly simple, but actually incredibly sophisticated scripts and it is without a doubt that none of these three films could have been made without any one of the trio.
In Before Sunrise, Celine and Jesse meet on a train while travelling in Europe. As one is wont to do as a young adult, the two talk all night, falling in love with each other’s ideas. These two young beautiful people are markedly more tempered when they meet again, nine years later in Before Sunset when Jesse, now a successful writer, visits Paris, where the very French Celine has been living. She visits the bookshop where he is speaking and the two embark again on yet another day marked with long playful philosophical conversation.
Nine years later we have Before Midnight. Jesse has indeed stayed with Celine, they have two astonishingly cute twin girls and they are on summer vacation in Greece. Jesse is still a successful novelist, but Celine is at a crossroads in her career.
The two are clearly past their ‘honeymoon’ period, struggling between their work, bringing up the twins, and the departure of Hank, Jesse’s son, who has just spent his summer holidays with them and is going back to Jesse’s former wife who loathes both him and Celine even nine years after the fact.
The film begins with Jesse and Celine driving back from the airport after having dropped Hank, with the twins asleep in the back. Their conversation turns alternately sour, sweet, playful, teasing, deadly serious, and reverts to an easy, comfortable exchange that is emblematic of their relationship.
The writing is so sharp and sure that this first scene quickly lays the groundwork for understanding what is niggling at each of them and these issues become crystallised over the course of a long, boozy Mediterranean lunch at their holiday home, surrounded by friends.
By the time the couple are walking to their hotel room, which has been bought as a gift by their friends so that they can have a romantic night on their own, well, let’s just say everything comes out. And yet, the dialogue, though it deals quite viscerally with the nitty-gritty ugliness of quotidian life, never strays far from real philosophical, existential questioning.
No matter how much these two very different people may fight, they have one thing in common, they love each other and they are articulate. They talk, they fight, they talk. And this in the end saves them. What will happen in another nine years, no one really knows, but I hope that Celine and Jesse will still be taking long walks and talking deep into the night.
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