Before Midnight

Right off the bat, the tone, the themes, the maturity are apparent. The film doesn’t open with a conversation between the two characters audiences have grown to love and have grown up with. Instead, we see two feet, a boy’s converses walking in step with his father, Jesse. Jesse, the young, romantic pessimist from Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, is no longer worrying about the big philosophical ideas and self-absorbed everlasting search to find true love. Now he anxiously questions his adolescent son as to whether he has packed each and every item, if he has his boarding pass and if he’ll be able to manage his flight connection. The contrast is jarring. Just as Jesse’s appearance has changed, his eyes look tired and there are slight wrinkles forming on his forehead and around his eyes, so have his problems. As he says goodbye to his son, who lives in American while he lives in Europe, a deep sadness fills Ethan Hawke’s face and immediately it is obvious that the happily ever after we, the audience, had hoped would occur once our two star-crossed lovers finally got together hasn’t happened. In its place is a much starker reality.

In the previous two films Jesse, coming off a bad break up in the first and realizing that his marriage was a sham and his life hadn’t amounted to much in the second, is the negative realist and Celine was the hopeless dreamer, who still lived with a romanticized view of the world. In the third, it seems the roles have been reversed.

When Jesse responds to the news that his son has had his first kiss he immediately wonders if they could be together forever to which Celine responds, “You are so corny. What are you, a 12-year old girl?” Jesse, a semi-successful author, is still living in a dream world, inventing pompous and esoteric ideas for his next book when in reality, the only books which he is able to write and sell are the books based on his own life and his relationship. Celine, on the other hand, seems to have great animosity for the depiction of herself in the books; denying they are about her when she meets a total stranger but admitting it is based on her at a dinner with her friends. Why does she feel so ambivalent towards these romantic and meaningful love letters to her? This is the question audiences are left to discover throughout the course of the third film.

The realities of life have set in. Most critics wrote that the second to last scene is where the final battle takes place but really, that final fight starts much earlier in the film, at the beginning, in the car. Peppered throughout their multiple conversations are moments of anger and bitterness bubbling below the surface, waiting for the right moment to be unleashed.

From the brilliant opening sequence in the airport to the final blowout in the hotel, Jesse’s guilt for leaving his son for Celine and Celine’s own guilt and frustration from what her life has become are essentially tearing them apart. Life is harder than they both had expected and all that has been unsaid, the anger and the pain from their life together, comes out and hits them in the face throughout this one day. The opening conversation in the car mirrors the final conversation in the brutal hotel room fight.

The stylish French woman full of passion and independence has been taken over by a rounder, frumpier person of structure and order. She even refers to herself as the general when play acting with her twin girls and Jesse to delegate shopping tasks. Celine’s hardening has never seemed as noticeable as when they join their friends for lunch. All the other couples around the table make fun of each other and tell embarrassing stories but still they seem to genuinely love each other. Celine and Jesse though, haven’t dealt with the tension that erupted about Jesse’s son and every single moment of love is overshadowed by Celine’s biting remarks. The need to be her own person, to be recognized for her own talents beyond motherhood and the disappointment over her relationship with Jesse have turned her bitter. There are fleeting moments when the love she had and the fun she had with Jesse return only to be overshadowed by her own competition for independence and lack of enjoyment from life. Even in the delicate and touching last scene, where Jesse attempts to rekindle some of their love and move past what has been uncovered, it seems that Celine isn’t fully able to. Will these two be able to make it or is this the beginning of the end, as Celine states in the early part of the movie?

I hope in another nine years they make the next in the series. With time, I hope that their disappointment with life will have mellowed and they will find some peace- just as it seems the oldest members at the dinner table have.