"Before Midnight" is a Deeply Rewarding Film That Builds Lovingly on the Films that Came Before It

The "Before" film series has two of the most unnecessary sequels in the history of film, as well as two of the best. No one was asking to find out if the one night romance between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delphy) went any further than that night. And no one was wondering if the equally ambiguous ending to the sequel Before Sunset, set 9 years later, needed to be stripped of its beautiful open endedness. But just because something is not needed does not mean it is unwanted, and Before Midnight is an excellent film that is a combination of fantastic scripting and acting. Before Midnight picks up once again 9 years later to stop in on these characters, and the series begins to reveal itself as a grand experiment of fictional storytelling, a potential counterpart to the "7 Up" documentary series. 

Before Midnight proves itself to be at times even stronger than its predecessors by taking what we knew from the last two films, our interest in what happened in the intervening years, and our affection for these characters and using all of it to create something even richer and more complex. Before Midnight, like the films that came before it, takes its time, at times with languorous assuredness (Many of the scenes are shot in unbroken, long single takes). But it its meandering is deceptive. The film isn't plot heavy but it's slowly dropping pieces of information, trusting us to fill in the blanks ourselves, before dropping a bombshell of a penultimate scene that has a thrilling sense of reckless abandon. The characters speak so frank and candidly that it feels intense, unsettling and hugely relieving. Its the moment we have been waiting for all film and it builds so knowingly off the series' history and the history of these characters.

I won't reveal any more; it is a scene best taken on its own as is much of the rest of the film. We learn what Jesse decided to do at the end of Before Sunset and the consequences of that decision. We discover that that decision has had unexpected, unforeseen consequences. But to divulge what the specifics to this are would be to spoil the fun of stopping in on these two and glimpsing their lives for the briefest of time. The film rewards our knowledge and our time spent with these characters and our devoted interest in what has happened to them and what will happen to them.

The film is interested in dialogue. Its almost entirely a film of people talking, and talking with wit and intelligence. There's painstaking delicateness to much of the writing (credited once again to Hawke, Delphy, and director Richard Linklater). There's the series usual interest in romance, love, and relationships, but there's an even greater preoccupation with the myth of the ideal relationship. The film deconstructs further and further; the romance (as well-grounded as it was) of the first film continues to shed away in favor of something far more knowing and mature.

Once upon a time two people met on a train and they fell for eachother as they walked and talked in Vienna. Nine years later we picked up their story in Paris wondering what had happened. And we pick up once again, this time in Greece, stopping in on two old friends and how their fairy tale one night together became something more entangled and in turn more gratifying.

Grade: A