Before Midnight (2013)

 This film has been sitting on my DVR for months. I didn't know what to expect, but after I finished Before Midnight (2013), I do admit that there is this feeling that Jesse and Celine won't make it much longer after we depart them at that table of the cafe where they seem to somewhat reconcile a very emotional attack on one another in their Greek hotel room at the end of a vacation as their twin girls (that one time they don't use a condom...) stay with friends. Jesse's son, Hank, spent nearly six weeks with them, and the mother (Celine calls her an alcoholic cunt) back in Chicago has made sure he continues to know that what happened in Before Sunset (2004) is the root cause of the divorce and any misery as a result. Jesse feels bad that he hasn't spent as much time with his son as he should have, mainly because he wanted to be with Celine. So that obviously comes up when they spend plenty of time in their hotel room fighting. But before the hotel room, these two don't actually fight a lot. They pass off disagreements, discuss a move from Paris to Chicago, converse about Celine's potential job and why she wants it (or has reservations about it), Jesse's conflict with not being in Hank's life (and guilt for not being a consistent part of Hank's life), and gather at a respected elder novelist's villa to talk about love, loss, and long-term relationships (the quirks, holding on to memories of those you love, how you met, and if it is now impossible to keep a relationship even together for a long period of time).

I do admit that I'm more or less a nihilist. I think in political circles, it's called being black-pilled. I see no good future for the world, although I think a certain few among billions will have a wonderful, rich life while so many others just won't. I never let my loved ones see too much of this side of me, sort of emitting a positive presence while truly believing that too many suffer as a blessed portion hardly ever understand what a real struggle is. The first two films in the Before Trilogy where Jesse and Celine fall in love through long walks and talks, with nine years split between these two events, the third film, has them spilling out in the hotel room a lot of caged animosity, frustration, uncomfortable feelings, and buried resentments. Jesse's guilt over his son and Celine's insecurities as a mother of their twins come to the fore in very animated discussion that eventually leads to Jesse calling her crazy as she leaves from the room more than once, only to return with some parting shots at him. When Celine tells Jesse she may not love him anymore, that nihilistic side of me said, "Of course she doesn't." I have been married to the same woman for 23 years, together with her for 25. I am the first to admit that our relationship hasn't always been rosy. We have had communication problems, said things to each other out of anger that we later regretted, have had great sex and bad sex, felt we were bad parents or struggled through raising two Autistic children wondering whether this or that was right or wrong, felt as if we were distancing each other even when we were in the same space, all of that. I admit that "Before Midnight" hit a bit too close to home. I have read through plenty of reviews for the film in different places where some praise and scrutinize the film for its willingness to expose that truth about how relationships can deteriorate or, at the very least, hit a big, hard wall that leads to partners walking away from each other in anger after hurling verbal assaults they eventually have to confront when tempers come down from the boil. 

What no one wants to confront, too, is that their beloved characters, Jesse and Celine, return to us nine years after "Before Sunset" older, grittier, with baggage and years of built up hostilities and unresolved issues that haven't been dealt with enough. I tell you that I just wanted to go back right now and revisit "Before Sunrise" when these two were fresh-faced, had a whole lot of life ahead of them, with plans not yet tethered to the demands that come with careers and family. Neither had anything yet bogging them down or dragging them through a lot of stresses and emotional weights. They had time to move about Europe, discussing hopes and dreams, beliefs and whatnot. It was a travelogue with these two very bright, young, vulnerable, and open twenty-somethings debating and confessing with each other the past, present, and future. But in "Before Midnight", we're far from 1994. They are in their 40s in 2013, and both have the baggage of experiencing success and what they perceive has been difficulty. I think the romantic fairy tale we like to hug and coddle as it seems far better than what is real life, especially today when so many people hate each other over fucking politics, being shed of its pretty skin to reveal an ugly side that is sadly very real and relatable can be more than a bit of a drag. I went from the start of the film with a big smile on my face as Jesse was gobbling an apple as their daughters were asleep in the back as Celine was going on about her job and the situation with Hank, to bliss as we spend some time with Greek friends before and during a lunch in such idyllic conditions, to that classic walk as Celine and Jesse move from that villa to their luxurious hotel room where I end up yelling in my head as they break apart before my eyes, "No! No! Please don't remove the veil from eyes and reveal to me that the Celine and Jesse of the past two films could resemble so many dissolving relationships!" And yet, if I'm honest, any attempts at Jesse using his charm and clever "traveler delivering a message from the future to Celine" conversation starter as a chance to cut through the tension and return the two of them to a peace and ease fractured by all the spillage in the hotel room couldn't salve the open wound that has finally bled out.

I guess these two are what I cling to when I need a smile, seeing them together, their chemistry, walking and talking, looking to make each other laugh, teasing and trolling affectionately, weaving about the discomforts of truths, bobbing from any vicious bombs that might crack into the idyll of what they have, until each other are a punching bag, despite Jesse telling her he loves her despite her flaws, while sometimes mocking her as Celine pokes and prods him about some Emily person he knows through his book tour. I think what breaks me the most is when Jesse does discuss Celine's "crazy"...in the past that was what made her so appealing, so unique and unpredictable, exciting and, yes, maddening. When Celine is honest about concerns as a mother while Jesse is away on book tours, not wanting to be some housewife submissive, and claiming her job as an opportunity she doesn't want to sacrifice as so many other women have in the past, Jesse seems to try and curtail that as nonsensical, believing she is so independent and feminist that would never happen. Nothing is worse than dismissing anything a woman says, and Jesse really raises the ire of Celine when he tries to counterpunch instead of just listen. It does sort of come to this when two people fail to communicate to each other on a daily basis, instead letting it just accumulate until a vacation in a hotel room. I felt deflated as Linklater's camera pulls away from them at the table, the two seemingly in a better place. I just felt that what was said cuts too deep to just accept as a fight that has found its resting place. For someone who just sees life right now as considerably bleak and fraught with turmoil, Jesse and Celine were my anchor to something bright and shiny. 3/5

Oh, I did fail to mention that Celine spends a good section of the hotel room conversation setpiece with her top down. I was admittedly really weirded-out by this and yet I really admired Delpy for committing to the scene as she is. I felt she wanted that to be wholly authentic to the characters, even if they weren't who we spent time with exactly in the past. I think the best moment in the film actually involves a widow at the table during the "fruit lunch" discussing her deceased husband and how his memory fades in and out, much like a sunset and sunrise...that really had such a depth to it beyond her own experience and felt as if it attached a context to Celine and Jesse's own relationship from the beginning to where this film ends. And the scene where the sun is going down over the horizon as Celine and Jesse watch it leave, with the night leading to a rather unpleasant hotel room experience just landed hard with me.