(I'll warn when I get to the spoilers)
This is the third in a trilogy which includes Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. I can't imagine this one being watched as a stand-alone movie and having anything near the effect it should. In fact, I would even recommend watching these several years apart. I watched these movies as they were released, and being the same age as this fictional but very realistic couple made it more of an involving experience.
The strongest aspects of this trilogy are the flowing endless dialogue, the acting, and the real characters. As opposed to many other opinions though, I sometimes felt that the dialogue in the last two movies became too pretentious and condensed to be real. These movies need more silence, pauses and looks.
In Before Sunrise, they were in their early 20s, smart and practical but open to experience an idealistic short romance based on their chance encounter. They connected, they were charming, they were real, and they pulled it off much to the delight of audiences.
In Before Sunset and nine years later, for the first half of the movie, they were unbearably self-obsessed and pretentious and talked at each other instead of with each other. They spent a few hours together, and gradually their attraction and chemistry came back, and made you believe that they may actually recover from their last few years of miserable relationships and closed-minded lifeless lives that were obviously bringing them down, as long as they got together and developed what they had. Some charm and romance crept in despite their newfound self-deprecating cynicism, leaving audiences with an open-ended ending full of potential. I hated it at first, then grew to like it better on second viewing.
In Before Midnight, in a too-realistic portrayal, they have been a couple for 9 years (with kids), but their personality differences have not been worked on and their marriage is on the rocks.
Jesse is a successful writer but his break with his previous wife and son in order to be with Celine is causing increasing strains in his current marriage. Little annoying things he does add to the strain, but what is very obvious in this movie is that she doesn't love him anymore so every little thing adds to the complaints.
Celine in this movie is like an amalgam of every neurosis in modern women. She is an angry activist, an angry feminist, an unfulfilled angry wife, a woman who is so lost and confused regarding what she wants, she cannot be satisfied no matter how many efforts he makes to clarify things and express his love for her, and she doesn't have the tools and outlook to fix her feelings for him so this is a Sisyphean task in any case. As three-dimensional as she is, this is not a sympathetic character to say the least.
*spoilers*
Which is why, at the end of the movie, anyone with a brain will realize that the small bone she throws him at the end is worthless and that this marriage is doomed. Which is why, as realistic as this movie is, it simply was not enjoyable. Not that movies need to be fun or romantic, but I do expect them to be rewarding or insightful in one way or another. I do not need to go to the movies to watch neurotic people flail at their last threads of marriage and fail at it miserably because of commonplace emotional incompetence.
If there is a next movie in a few years, the only possible outcome is that they got divorced soon after this night, and they get together one more time to talk about how they failed their marriage with humorous hindsight and resignation. And then they have sex for old time's sake because the attraction will still be there, although they have no clue what to do with it. That's my screenplay for the next one.
But Ingmar Bergman already covered similar ground with his superb and recommended 'Scenes from a Marriage'.
If it were up to me, I would have made this movie differently: The fight wouldn't have been so convincingly final. And they would recover from a vicious fight because they made us believe that they built a solid loving base with which to recover. That could have been just as deep, realistic and much more enjoyable.
This is the third in a trilogy which includes Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. I can't imagine this one being watched as a stand-alone movie and having anything near the effect it should. In fact, I would even recommend watching these several years apart. I watched these movies as they were released, and being the same age as this fictional but very realistic couple made it more of an involving experience.
The strongest aspects of this trilogy are the flowing endless dialogue, the acting, and the real characters. As opposed to many other opinions though, I sometimes felt that the dialogue in the last two movies became too pretentious and condensed to be real. These movies need more silence, pauses and looks.
In Before Sunrise, they were in their early 20s, smart and practical but open to experience an idealistic short romance based on their chance encounter. They connected, they were charming, they were real, and they pulled it off much to the delight of audiences.
In Before Sunset and nine years later, for the first half of the movie, they were unbearably self-obsessed and pretentious and talked at each other instead of with each other. They spent a few hours together, and gradually their attraction and chemistry came back, and made you believe that they may actually recover from their last few years of miserable relationships and closed-minded lifeless lives that were obviously bringing them down, as long as they got together and developed what they had. Some charm and romance crept in despite their newfound self-deprecating cynicism, leaving audiences with an open-ended ending full of potential. I hated it at first, then grew to like it better on second viewing.
In Before Midnight, in a too-realistic portrayal, they have been a couple for 9 years (with kids), but their personality differences have not been worked on and their marriage is on the rocks.
Jesse is a successful writer but his break with his previous wife and son in order to be with Celine is causing increasing strains in his current marriage. Little annoying things he does add to the strain, but what is very obvious in this movie is that she doesn't love him anymore so every little thing adds to the complaints.
Celine in this movie is like an amalgam of every neurosis in modern women. She is an angry activist, an angry feminist, an unfulfilled angry wife, a woman who is so lost and confused regarding what she wants, she cannot be satisfied no matter how many efforts he makes to clarify things and express his love for her, and she doesn't have the tools and outlook to fix her feelings for him so this is a Sisyphean task in any case. As three-dimensional as she is, this is not a sympathetic character to say the least.
*spoilers*
Which is why, at the end of the movie, anyone with a brain will realize that the small bone she throws him at the end is worthless and that this marriage is doomed. Which is why, as realistic as this movie is, it simply was not enjoyable. Not that movies need to be fun or romantic, but I do expect them to be rewarding or insightful in one way or another. I do not need to go to the movies to watch neurotic people flail at their last threads of marriage and fail at it miserably because of commonplace emotional incompetence.
If there is a next movie in a few years, the only possible outcome is that they got divorced soon after this night, and they get together one more time to talk about how they failed their marriage with humorous hindsight and resignation. And then they have sex for old time's sake because the attraction will still be there, although they have no clue what to do with it. That's my screenplay for the next one.
But Ingmar Bergman already covered similar ground with his superb and recommended 'Scenes from a Marriage'.
If it were up to me, I would have made this movie differently: The fight wouldn't have been so convincingly final. And they would recover from a vicious fight because they made us believe that they built a solid loving base with which to recover. That could have been just as deep, realistic and much more enjoyable.