by Bruce E. Parry
I liked this film the best of the three films in the (so far) trilogy (Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) are its predecessors). In this film, Jesse has divorced his wife in the U.S. and is living with Celine in Paris with their twin girls. It has been nine years since they linked up at the end of the last film and 18 years since they first met in the first film.
The first thing I liked about it is that it involves a lot more characters at the beginning of the film, so the interaction is more complex, very nuanced and quite interesting. The characters come from different age groups and present different views of marriage and relationships that I found quite interesting. And, of course, the points of view are presented by both men and women. Jesse and Celine are part of the mix and play off the others in their dialog. It is the kind of dialog that made both of the first two films interesting.
As with all films, the beginning sets up the conflicts that play out through the rest of the film. We meet Jesse’s son, Hank, who is departing for the U.S. after having “the best summer of his life.” We see Jesse and Celine’s twins and Celine announces a new job opportunity. They discuss the contradictions inherent in these situations constructively and seem—along with the other couples they interact with—to be the happy duo.
It’s their last night, so one of the other couples has given them a gift: a night in the local swanky hotel. They walk to the hotel and the discussion begins. As with the other films, their discussion is done in a very long single-shot take that is quite noticeable and adds depth to their marital discourse.
When they get to the hotel, the discussion devolves into what I can only call a destructive argument. Jesse feels the need to move back to the U.S. to be near his son during his formative high school years. This is in direct conflict with Celine’s new job opportunity, which it turns out, she sees more like the opportunity of a lifetime than she had let on. She feels Jesse is suppressing her for his own, selfish needs and the whole thing gets really ugly.
I won’t get into the rest of it, but I really felt like this was marriage. A friend of mine once said that his marriage (of many years) was a process of him and his wife falling in and out of love with each other. Another friend, also in a marriage of long standing, said he was still married because he and his wife never wanted to get divorced at the same time. In my experience. that’s the way marriage is. You get in arguments, you go through difficulties, you experience real antagonism and, if it is to last, you stick with it. Part of the deal with the movie is that they are only about 40 years old. At that age some of this hasn’t fully sunk in yet. It takes more life experience than that—at least it has in my case—before we integrate these feelings and lessons.
And I think that’s the key to the three films. They feel like real life. The first feels like unrequited young love. The second feels like a searching for something that was lost. The third feels like a real marriage. In short, I can identify with all three from my personal experience and that is essential to appreciating a film.
Copyright Bruce E. Parry
https://bruceeparry.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/before-midnight-2013/
I liked this film the best of the three films in the (so far) trilogy (Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) are its predecessors). In this film, Jesse has divorced his wife in the U.S. and is living with Celine in Paris with their twin girls. It has been nine years since they linked up at the end of the last film and 18 years since they first met in the first film.
The first thing I liked about it is that it involves a lot more characters at the beginning of the film, so the interaction is more complex, very nuanced and quite interesting. The characters come from different age groups and present different views of marriage and relationships that I found quite interesting. And, of course, the points of view are presented by both men and women. Jesse and Celine are part of the mix and play off the others in their dialog. It is the kind of dialog that made both of the first two films interesting.
As with all films, the beginning sets up the conflicts that play out through the rest of the film. We meet Jesse’s son, Hank, who is departing for the U.S. after having “the best summer of his life.” We see Jesse and Celine’s twins and Celine announces a new job opportunity. They discuss the contradictions inherent in these situations constructively and seem—along with the other couples they interact with—to be the happy duo.
It’s their last night, so one of the other couples has given them a gift: a night in the local swanky hotel. They walk to the hotel and the discussion begins. As with the other films, their discussion is done in a very long single-shot take that is quite noticeable and adds depth to their marital discourse.
When they get to the hotel, the discussion devolves into what I can only call a destructive argument. Jesse feels the need to move back to the U.S. to be near his son during his formative high school years. This is in direct conflict with Celine’s new job opportunity, which it turns out, she sees more like the opportunity of a lifetime than she had let on. She feels Jesse is suppressing her for his own, selfish needs and the whole thing gets really ugly.
I won’t get into the rest of it, but I really felt like this was marriage. A friend of mine once said that his marriage (of many years) was a process of him and his wife falling in and out of love with each other. Another friend, also in a marriage of long standing, said he was still married because he and his wife never wanted to get divorced at the same time. In my experience. that’s the way marriage is. You get in arguments, you go through difficulties, you experience real antagonism and, if it is to last, you stick with it. Part of the deal with the movie is that they are only about 40 years old. At that age some of this hasn’t fully sunk in yet. It takes more life experience than that—at least it has in my case—before we integrate these feelings and lessons.
And I think that’s the key to the three films. They feel like real life. The first feels like unrequited young love. The second feels like a searching for something that was lost. The third feels like a real marriage. In short, I can identify with all three from my personal experience and that is essential to appreciating a film.
Copyright Bruce E. Parry
https://bruceeparry.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/before-midnight-2013/
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