Before Midnight

I enjoyed Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, so I guess it is inevitable that I love Before Midnight as well.  I've always felt that this series of movies is so different from other movie sequels.  All of the Before series (let's just call them the Before series since they all have that word in common) are consist of long shots of conversations, interesting and insightful conversations, conversations about Celine and Jessie's thoughts and ideas about life and love and of each other.

It was another nine years since we revisit Jessie and Celine, and well, if you are old enough and mature enough to have watched Before Sunrise since day one, you will say that you have grown up, grown old and grown mature with them.  Imagine you were the same age as Jessie and Celine when Before Sunrise went in theaters, literally you are growing up with them.  Even though I am only birthed in 1995, I do feel like as I watch Jessie and Celine's lives progress, they have grown.  The topics and the things that they talk about, things that they think of, their thoughts and ideas, have changed and matured.  They saw things differently.  Before Sunrise is full of hopes and dreams, full of enthusiasm and excitement of the future.  Before Midnight here, is about grown ups, about matured love, about family and the burdens of daily lives.  Before Midnight is about two people sorting out their lives.

The way the actors aged with their characters too, is impeccable.  Julie Deply has grown, well, a little plump and more feminine, more maternal.  Ethan Hawke has grown mature and has grown a few wrinkles and a belly.  But this is all alright because this is how reality is.  This is how real life relationship is and how real people are.  People age, nobody can always be young and perfect.  

Jessie and Celine's relationship is obviously not perfect as well.  Just like any other couple, they argue and they hate each other and then they make up.  The climax of the entire movie (given the movie is filled with conversations around lunch tables and long walks and car drives) is when the couple is arguing in the hotel room about sacrifices and their love for each other, how the other person's love is not enough, how the other person have fucked another girl or blew another man.  It's an argument that any couple will most probably have.  The way they make up though, is extremely cute.  I love Jessie's story.

I also love the chemistry between those two.  Their conversations are witty and interesting.  Yes, they are long, but they are absorbing and hook me right in.  I wish I could have a relationship as such.