Movie Review: "Before Midnight"

"Before Midnight": B-.  "Does this [insert any article of clothing or an accessory] make me look fat?"  How many guys would be dumb enough to answer in the affirmative to that question if posed to them by a member of the female persuasion?  Certainly not Jesse (Ethan Hawke), even though Celine (Julie Delpy) has been asking him that, or something of that ilk, throughout their many years together.  What really frustrates Celine is that she has met her match in Jesse, so she seldom has the satisfaction of a "gotcha" after one of their verbal sparring matches.  She is wont to ask him questions for which there is only one correct answer, and by "correct" I mean an answer after which the responder would not have to duck .  Jesse isn't always willing to play that game, and that leads to Celine's conclusion that he's holding back the truth that he doesn't want her to hear, at least not from him.

You already know from the first paragraph of my review of Les Miz (February 1, 2013) that I recognize the awesome responsibility of providing a fair review of movies in this blog.  I would not want to lead astray the thou... the hund... the handful of people who actually read what I post.  Therefore, in preparation for this review I re-watched Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) right before embarking to the Lagoon a few days ago to see Before Midnight.  Don't feel too sorry for me.  I own both of those flicks on DVD, and it was a pleasure to see them again.  (Sneak preview to my next Quarterly Review: I graded them A and A-, respectively.)  As is true of many movies which are the third in a series, it is not essential to watch the first two installments, but doing so anyway is highly recommend.  The next paragraph is a brief synopsis of the history of the protagonists' relationship leading up to Midnight.  I have attempted to cleanse the paragraph of spoilers.

In Sunrise, Jesse and Celine are in their early twenties, and meet cute on a train.  Jesse, an American with a Eurail pass, has a morning flight to catch out of Vienna, the next stop.  Celine, a French woman who once studied in the States, is heading home to Paris.  Jesse talks her into getting off the train with him to carry on the conversation they've been enjoying in the dining car.  The remainder of the movie follows them around as they relish each other's company, knowing that their time together is limited, to say the least.  In Sunset, it is nine years later, and Paris is the last stop on Jesse's whirlwind tour to promote his new book, a memoir which includes remembrances of a Viennese romance he once had with an anonymous girl.  Guess who is peering in through the window of the bookstore where Jesse is signing autographs?  Once again Jesse has a plane to catch and the clock is ticking.

Back to Midnight.  We are now in the present day.  Jesse and Celine are together, the parents of twin girls.  The family has been living in Paris, but this story takes place in the south of Greece where they have been vacationing with Jesse's fourteen year old son, Hank, for the past six weeks.  (Hank was referenced in Sunset, although we never saw him.)  The boy lives with his mother, Jesse's ex-wife, in Chicago, and it's now time for his return flight.  The conversation between father and son as Jesse walks Hank to the gate perfectly captures the relationship between a worrying parent and a young teenager who wants to dispense with the good-byes and just get on the plane.  The cleverly written dialogue ends with the kid reassuring his father that things will be okay by using the same words his father had uttered minutes ago.
 
Richard Linklater directed all three Jesse-Celine movies.  His style is to film very long scenes comprised almost entirely of dialogue.  Following the airport intro, the remainder of Midnight is comprised of four lengthly scenes, three of them limited to only Jesse and Celine, and one excrutiatingly long outdoor feast in which four couples of disparate ages drone on about personal observations, theories, anecdotes, and philosophies on life.  I have never been to a gathering of eight people where each person could speak uninterrupted because the other seven were mesmerized by what the person with the talking stick had to say.  But, for the characters involved here, good for them! 

One could legitimately ask, "How can you diss the dinner feast conversation in Midnight on one hand, and on the other speak so highly of Sunrise and Sunset?  After all, the conversations between Jesse and Celine in those first two movies fit that same general description."  Fair enough; I don't have a good answer.  For some reason I found the dialogue between the two friends in Sunrise and Sunset to be more natural and interesting than the conversations they shared in Midnight, and far more listenable than the dinner party prattling.  The words resonate more effectively in the first two movies than the new one.  In the first two films, the couple was up against the clock, thereby giving more urgency to the later scenes.  In Midnight, time is not of the essence (to coin a phrase), so the edge has to be supplied differently.  For the most part, that edge is the product of Celine's willingness to pick unwarranted fights.  I typically enjoy movies with good verbal jousting.  For example, I gave the extraordinarily well written (and acted) Carnage an A- (reviewed here on February 15, 2012).  Two of the keys to writing that kind of scene are (i) unless it is a comedy, the argument has to be over something relatively worth fighting for, and (ii) each of the participants has to make a good case for her position.  In Midnight, the first criterion is met (viz., the welfare of Hank) but the second is not.  On my scorecard, Jesse wins by a TKO in an early round.

Their big brouhaha emerges almost out of nowhere.  The day starts innocently enough as the happy couple leisurely strolls hand in hand through the ruins of the Peloponnese Islands.  This hearkens back to their first night together, when they wandered the streets of Vienna in Sunrise.  Once they reach their hotel things turn on a dime, however, as Celine takes a call from Hank, who is transferring planes in London.  After the call has ended, the gloves figuratively come off.  At the heart of the dispute is Jesse's desire to at least have a conversation with Celine about the possibility of moving to the US to be closer to Hank. Celine will not hear of it and starts issuing ultimatums, complete with non sequiturs.  In the heat of battle she uses the infamous Lloyd Bentsen debate strategy of hitting below the belt.  Jesse is emotionally wounded.  What will he do about it?  Equally as important, will there be a fourth chapter nine years hence?  Perhaps it will be titled Before Noon. 

As Sally Field might be inclined to say, I really really wanted this movie to be great.  The first two movies were excellent, and with Midnight we have a script co-authored by Linklater and the two stars.  All the pieces were in place, but I left the theater feeling a little disappointed.  In my favorite Bon Jovi song, In These Arms, he tells his girl that he needs her "like the poet needs the pain."  That lyric came to mind as I thought about Celine.  She has not felt the pain as she grew up comfortably, being educated at the Sorbonne and able to travel internationally while pursuing an ecology-related career, which has long been her passion.  The father of her daughters has devoted his life to her.  Part of her problem, as correctly perceived by Jesse, is that she wants sympathy even though he gave her everything she wanted, including living in Paris four thousand miles from his son.  When he tells Celine, "You're nuts" she does not like that.  Sometimes the truth hurts.