Let me join the overwhelming and justified chorus of admiration for Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Director Richard Linklater, whose neo-romantic (anti-romantic?) trilogy of films about Jesse and Celine reaches it’s angst-ridden peak in the new installment, Before Midnight.
They really did achieve something like a small miracle…
They made a sequel of integrity. They resisted giving us the lazy “happy ending” we may have wanted, or thought we wanted, and stayed true to their characters and to the real world. They told a brand new story …only with people we already know and have invested in. Which makes this voyeuristic glimpse into the difficulty of maintaining a marriage (or common-law union) that much more bracing.
It’s a difficult film, but one that rings true, and feels as if it will get richer with each viewing.
It’s also very very funny.
I had mixed feelings when I walked out of the theatre. I was in awe, exhilarated, exhausted, disappointed and disturbed all at once. It took me a while to process what I had seen. But as I did, I began to see the subtle brilliance of what this talented trio had done. They used the baggage we carried from the first two films to genuinely surprise us. They created a Rorschach Test, turned an unforgiving mirror on us. And yet, we shouldn’t be surprised at all. The first two movies, though romantic, were also peppered with sadness and a world-weary cynicism (even when the couple were young kids), and they were unstintingly naturalistic in their approach. In the second movie, we don’t even get to see them kiss. They refuse to give us that Hollywood moment. We have to make do with a song, a sexy little dance, and sure knowledge that Jesse is definitely going to miss his plane. And let’s not forget the messy detail that he is already unhappily married with child. All of this has to have ramifications and we get a heavy dose of that in Midnight.
The film deftly drops details one by one, filling us in on the intervening years. They don’t dump a ton of forced exposition, but let us suss it out as the evening grows more and more tense. At one point, Jesse recalls that day in Paris and how it “ruined” his life. And Celine, who was always a little prickly and self-righteous under that adorable exterior, has grown restless and resentful of feeling like a mere apendage, The Famous Writer’s Muse. As in all fights, at first it comes out in random snipes – a kind of generalized bitchiness – but gradually we begin to see the pattern of her frustration.
Julie Delpy emerges as the most valuable player here and the bravest, allowing herself to be unsympathetic and raw and exposed both emotionally and physically. There is not a trace of vanity in her performance. Make no mistake, this is an Oscar-worthy turn. I just hope the Academy can see that. She is fine with being the “villain”, or at least the “fucking mayor of crazytown” as Jesse calls her, because she knows this is all an organic hardening of a character she first essayed at the tender age of 23. It’s sort of genius.
Not to say Ethan Hawke doesn’t hold his own. He does, in spades. He gives a wonderfully confident and relaxed performance. Jesse’s artistic dreams have, to a great extent, been fulfilled – and he sincerely loves his wife – but there is a complacency there and we can see that he is not without blame in Celine’s frustration. His smug responses only make her more crazy. There is a classic moment when she almost offhandedly confronts him about a past infidelity and we see him masterfully avoid admitting guilt while seeming to answer firmly. It says a lot. As does the fact that when he throws back a counter-accusation she quickly drops the subject. These are people who may have briefly strayed, but neither really care…their problem is more complex. Just the fact the film so deftly steps around this cliche is a major triumph.
At the end, when Jesse finally gets angry himself and gives up on fighting her, we see that Celine is no more ready to throw away this relationship than he is. She just wanted to test him. She wanted to push him to see what he would do, how much he cares. Then and only then is she ready to move on.
This is the way couples fight. They step to the brink once in a while and then they step back.
“This is true love. This is it right now”, Jesse says in exasperation.
And true moviemaking too.
