Mind Playing Tricks On Me

The legendarily perturbable Richard Brody of The New Yorker is one of the few film critics not simply un-smitten with Richard Linklater's Jesse & Celine Trilogy - "Before Sunrise" (1995), "Before Sunset" (2004) and "Before Midnight" (2013) - but outright hostile toward them. In a typically breathless whoosh of writing he smacks the films around ceaselessly. "I knew that 'Before Sunset' was a cheat from the mishmash of Paris geography that the action is based on." That is not a misplaced criticism, however, in the vein of the annoying moviegoer who feels he or she deserves a merit badge for picking out continuity errors but a more choice observation of how that “mishmash of Paris geography” speaks to the film’s overall intentions. "The lack of respect for Paris geography in the interest of the picturesque," he writes, "goes along with the actors’ chatty smiliness and the script’s foregrounded intentions." In other words, a film so determined to present "naturalism" (Brody's word) is cheating that naturalism by quite obviously over-staging everything. He's right, I suppose, though I suspect there is more improv going on moment-to-moment then he probably wishes to give credit for, but I also don't find fault with Linklater's approach. Isn't that, like, you know, filmmaking? Formally creating something to feel spontaneous? Still, despite my disagreement with Brody's stance, I found myself returning to it in the wake of my long-awaited long-feared re-watching of "Before Midnight" as I thought about how we see what we see - or, perhaps I should say, what we think we see.

One detail of the film I had forgotten involves Jesse and Celine, on vacation in Greece, taking a detour to the shrine of St. Odilia, the Patron Saint of Eyesight. People pray to her to restore eyesight but I couldn't help thinking of it in the more metaphorical context of Mr. Brody's musings. Not for nothing is this the place where the screenplay deems it time to inform the audience that despite having twin daughters, Jesse and Celine are not married. "The girls asked me again," Celine says, "what our wedding was like." And so she told them a story. She continues: "It's just all those fairy tales they like so much, you know? Remember when they were little, at the end of every cartoon they watched, they'd be all 'Oh they're getting married!' Even if it's Pinocchio and his dad, or Donald Duck and his nephews." Fairy tales. Not unlike, say, "Before Sunrise", the first film in the (so far) trilogy of Jesse and Celine, where they meet for one night in Vienna and fall in love, never to see each other again (until the next film nine years later).

Kismet, as it so often does, came calling the day after my long-awaited long-feared re-watching of "Before Midnight" when I listened to the previous evening's airing of "A Prairie Home Companion" which was a re-broadcast of an episode from nearly thirty years ago, November 23rd, 1985 in Claremont, California. In it, Garrison Keillor, in a moment that becomes supremely meta (albeit in a very Midwestern way), wonders if all these people he discusses back in Lake Wobegon might not be real. That leads him to wondering if other momentous memories he retains might not be real. As if they are so momentous in his imagination, so consequential to the person he thinks he is or has become or once was, that the only possible explanation is he made it up, projected it into his imagination to work as some sort of cosmic explanation. This leads to him wondering if a particular girl from his past and the moment that he chased after her and took her hand might very well merely be a story he made up. "I hope not," he says in a placid voice that is nonetheless haunting.

A movie exists and so that movie is what it is, and "Before Sunrise" exists and so it is the story of how and Jesse and Celine met and yet......what if it's just their imagination? What if it's just a fairy tale? What if it's just a story they made up to tell their daughters, to tell their friends, to tell themselves? What if “Before Midnight” is “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Before Sunrise” is “Newhart”? I hope not.

Several years ago I watched a film called “Free Enterprise” in which a couple Trekkies meet their idol, William Shatner, who immediately pitches them a Shatner-ish idea. Long after the fact, I recounted to my friend Daryl, a Trekkie, how this scene involved Shatner yearning to perform a one-man version of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” in which he’d, as the term one-man version implies, play all the parts. “Even Ophelia?” I said just as the Trekkies said to Shatner. “Yes,” I replied in my best (worst) Shatner impression. At some point in the wake of telling him this, we both happened to catch “Free Enterprise” showing on TV, and when the aforementioned sequence arrived, I was stunned to discover that Shatner was not pitching “Hamlet” but “Julius Ceasar.” The Trekkies point out that to play all the parts in “Julius Ceasar” means Shatner would have to stab himself in the back. “I’ve done it before,” says Shatner.

I was flummoxed. How was my remembrance of the sequence so spectacularly incorrect? I mean, I even imagined dialogue that hadn’t happened! I submit this story because this is a movie blog and I’m attempting to keep it relevant but also to demonstrate how so many stories of our past, even the most inane, can in the melodramatic recesses of our mind be re-shaped. Maybe I changed it to “Hamlet” because I know “Hamlet” so much better than “Julius Ceasar.” Maybe I said Ophelia because sub-consciously any time I think of “Hamlet” I think of Kate Winslet playing Ophelia. The “Why?” of the reconstruction of this specific memory is in the context of this piece irrelevant compared to the broader question of “How Many Other Memories Have I Reconstructed?”

“People have these romantic projections they put on everything that’s not based on any kind of reality.” This is what Jesse says to Celine in “Before Sunrise” and in a way “Before Midnight” (as well as “Before Sunset”) works as a realistic deconstruction of the romantic projection of the first film. At the same time, “Before Sunrise” itself is a romantic projection that’s not based on any kind of reality, and that’s what I did do and why it still speaks so strongly to me and why “Before Midnight’s” subtle questioning of that romantic projection tears my soul in two.

Twenty years ago this summer one of the most momentous events of my life took place, and I’m not entirely being hyperbolic. It was back in high school during my churchgoing days and my Lutheran youth group was striking out for the ELCA Youth Gathering in Atlanta, and being an epic introvert, I declined to go because, my apologies, Jesus, but Jesus, all the people. My parents and friends ultimately convinced me otherwise and I went. But because I chose to sign up after my own collective already had, I was forced to enroll with another collective from a different church in a different town. This meant upon arrival in Atlanta, I had to separate from my friends at our hotel to go check in with the other group at their hotel halfway across town. In other words, as someone who was wholly uncomfortable with people I didn’t know, I was suddenly with a whole group of people I didn’t know in a city I’d never been to.

I still have nightmares about being at parties where I don’t know anyone, yet as I’ve grown, I’ve learned better how to quell my anxieties. At the age of 16, however, I was helpless, and inwardly I was having a panic attack. And there was one girl (who shall remain nameless to protect her from the ravings of some moron with a blog who hasn’t seen her in, like, 18 years) who recognized, without explicitly ever saying so, that I was having a panic attack and, for lack of a better phrase, took care of me. It was so sweet and so wonderful. She was so sweet and so wonderful. This was in advance of my junior year and so nearly 12 months later, when I went to my first prom, even though she went to another school, she went as my date.

Later that same day, as we gallivanted in the deep south, it started to rain, prompting us to veer for cover in a nearby shopping mall, and as we did, I sped up too fast and got ahead of this girl, with whom I had been walking and talking, and so she grasped the back of my shirt and pulled me back toward her. It’s a split-second that’s never left me and that I can still feel when I really think about it, and I realize that taken in conjunction with that entire day and the events it led to correlates directly to my propensity for putting romantic projections on everything. Every one of the twelve million references I've made to “Serendipity” can be traced directly to that pull on my shirt, a moment that still seems to me like the most emblematic in a gargantuan Georgian fairytale.

There seems to be consensus - at least among the populace that treats every life circumstance like an ongoing Slate “You're Doing It Wrong” article - that once you leave your twenties it's time to retire romanticism and idealism and nostalgia. I think instead of Bruce Springsteen hoarsely exhorting that “Someday these childish dreams must end / to become a man and grow up to dream again.” Every time I’ve heard him sing those lines live is one of the moments I sing along the loudest because it understands that as you get older, yes, you must set aside a certain set of romantic ideals, but that doesn't mean you have to set aside all your romantic ideals. And I haven't. And I won't. And yet.

The older and wearier I get, the deeper my problems and the world's problems become, the more society kvetches about every little thing, the more I feel my soul grumbling in the mornings and getting sleepy earlier than ever in the evenings, the more I begin to question that line and those romantic projections, the less I can feel that pull on my shirt, and the more terrified I am. And I start to worry. Did she really pull on my shirt? Was that real? Was that just a story I made up? I hope not.

5 Actresses To Play Jesse Wallace's Ex-Wife

I recently re-took the distressing “Before Midnight” plunge after avoiding it for a year and a couple months after having my ardent (pitiful) Jesse & Celine Idealism shattered. And. Well. Yeah. It still hurt. I came around to seeing the ending in a bit more of a positive light – not positive as in “good” but positive as in “happy” – but not entirely. I don’t think I’ll ever get there. And in other ways, it was an even more brutal emotional experience than the first go-around. So brutal, in fact, that I unleashed yet another essay regarding my relationship with these films. And. Well. Yeah. I couldn’t bring myself to publish it. I almost trashed the whole thing. Not because I wasn’t pleased with it but because it kinda freaked me out. Perhaps I’ll put the post up on my birthday because an emotionally terrifying post coinciding with my birthday totally seems Cinema Romantico-esque.

Anyway, in lieu of that post, I still got to thinking. Because I’m always getting to thinking, if not about interesting things, per se, at least about things that I find “interesting” at which point I subject my few loyal readers who haven’t already flown this cinematic coop on account of my Katy Perry references to ponderings about them. ANYWAY, I got to thinking about the character in “Before Midnight” who is never seen but still a major player – that is, The Other Woman. The one to whom Jesse was previously married and gave birth to his son and whom he left Celine for because Jesse was meant to be with Celine because the world is perfect and wonderful (it isn’t). She is a major player because, as we learn, she moved Jesse’s son out of New York under the cover of darkness to limit her ex-spouse’s visitation rights. Cold. About as cold as the ways in which she’s referenced. In order, she is referred to as being “drunk and abusive psychologically”, possessing “the mother instinct of Medea” and – oh boy, here we go – “a hateful cunt” (Celine’s words! CELINE’S WORDS!!!).

So let’s say in nine years when “After Noon” (it’s a play on words) is released that Linklater, based upon our above criteria, wants to cast the ex-Ms. Wallace. To whom does he turn?

5 Actresses To Play Jesse Wallace's Ex-Wife

Marisa Tomei

Well, obviously. I mean, she should be in everything after all.

Winona Ryder

I concede both the predictability of this choice and its blatant self-referentialism, that casting the woman who acted opposite Hawke in the angstiest of angst fests, “Reality Bites”, would be an in-joke of epic proportions in a film series that should have nothing to do with in-jokes. And yet. Set all past history aside and simply envision Ms. Ryder in a metaphorical vaccum as a woman with “the mother instinct of Medea.” Yeah, you did.

Amy Adams

If you thought “The Fighter” was against type, this would totally go against the “Enchanted”, Probably The Nicest Person In The Whole World grain, and she could do it. Beware all ye who doubt the versatile skillz of AA. (I’m also assuming that in nine years she’ll have six Oscars and can just get cast in whatever she wants.)

Rosemarie DeWitt

God. God, what I would give to see Rosemarie DeWitt bust out the scoff face as Jesse does his Verbal Scat thing and then just cut him off and lay a titanic DeWitt-ish “You're so full of shit” on him. “I know what you’re doing, Jesse, okay? You’re answering all my questions with questions. I mean, I know you think you’re being really cagey, but you’ve used this same evasive methodology since I met you. It’s pretty obvious. And by the way, shoehorning a Dostoevsky reference into the middle of an argument? There’s no peanut gallery. There aren’t judges awarding you literary style points.” GOD, what I’d give.

Rachelle LaFevre

I am not a movie casting director because if I was a movie casting director I would do things like cast Billy Dee Williams as Batman and cast Kate Beckinsale as a version of Guinevere that told that charlatan Arthur and that lip server Lancelot what to go do with themselves and ruled the kingdom her damn self, but still… I like to imagine casting directors having epiphanies like the one Eddie Adams from Torrance had in the hot tub in “Boogie Nights.” And that was exactly the kind of epiphany I had when considering who should play Jesse Wallace’s ex-wife. When I close my eyes, I see this thing, a sign, I see this name in bright blue neon lights with a purple outline. And this name is so bright and so sharp that the sign, it just blows up because the name is so powerful. Rachelle LaFevre.

8 Couples Jesse & Celine Could Become

This past year found our beloved Jesse & Celine of “Before Sunrise” / “Before Sunset” morphing into wearied, acidly argumentative (non) married couple in “Before Midnight.” It was bitter cup of tea to drink (or spit out while running around screaming, waving your hands above your head). And it’s why it got me to thinking today – the most “romantic” of all days – just where their relationship could progress nine or eighteen or twenty-seven years from now in “Before Noon.”

8 Couples Jesse & Celine Could Become

Isidor & Ida Strauss, “Titanic.” 

In real life, philanthropists Isidor & Ida were an unabashedly in-love elderly couple who perished together on April 14, 1912 when Ida refused entry to a lifeboat to meet her maker alongside Isidor, saying “Where you go, I go.” Sigh. In James Cameron’s 1997 masterpiece (yeah, that's right, I said it) you might remember Mr. & Mrs. Straus as the couple laying together on the bed just out of reach of the rushing water about to consume as “Nearer My God To Thee” sets the mood. Sigh. So, could this be elderly Jesse & Celine? Meeting their fate with a final declaration of true love aboard a Royal Caribbean Cruise gone wrong? 

Odds: 95 – 1. I mean, you saw “Before Midnight”, right? 

Larry & Carol Lipton, “Manhattan Murder Mystery.” 

Jesse & Celine could move to Madrid! It could be Madrid Murder Mystery! Javier Bardem could play the Alan Alda part! Penelope Cruz could play the Anjelica Huston part! OH MY GOD, THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN! 

 Odds: 90 – 1. This isn’t happening.

Peter & Agnes, “Bug.” 

I admit this would be a somewhat surreal direction for Jesse & Celine to take but hey, they spent damn near the whole back half of “Before Midnight” locked in a hotel room. Who’s to say next time out they don’t go mad, imagine a bug infestation and stow themselves away from the outside world? Yes, this sounds depressing, but I truly thought the end of “Before Midnight” was even more depressing. Even if Peter & Agnes were literally out of their minds, they weren't playing make believe.

Odds: 50 – 1. Remote possibility……but not that remote.

Georges & Anne, “Amour.”

I know. Believe me, I know. It’s soul crushing to envision Jesse doing that to Celine (if you’ve seen the film, you know exactly what I’m talking about). But take a deep breath, a glug of Glögg and hear me out – can’t you kinda see it ending this way for Jesse and Celine? They are loving but combative, and if you put Celine in the same position as Anne, I think she’d take it about as well. And I think Jesse would handle it about as well as George. And while some critics claimed "Amour" was all a polar vortex put-on, a mean-spirited exercise in pretend empathy, I disagreed. Ultimately I saw the way in which those in amour, probably wish they could more or less go out together, a la Johnny & June. Isn’t that a poetic thought for Jesse & Celine?

Odds: 25 - 1. 

Frank & April Wheeler, “Revolutionary Road.” 

Imagine an inverted telling of the Richard Yates novel, with Jesse & Celine living in the Paris suburbs and Jesse commuting to work every day (his latest series of novels have flopped) and Celine staying at home with the girls and, frustrated, deciding to take off for New York where Celine will work so Jesse can be free to write until……well......(weeping).

Odds: 17 - 1. 

Team Zissou (Steve & Eleanor), “The Life Aquatic.” 

“I’d like to speak on the record for a moment. Eleanor has always been the brains behind Team Zissou.” I’m not saying Jesse & Celine will begin going on oceanic expeditions and filming them, I’m merely saying that one day Jesse will admit that Celine is the brains behind Team Jesse & Celine.

Odds: 12 - 1.

David & Linda Howard, “Lost In America.” 

There is a moment in “Lost In America”, about a couple played by Albert Brooks and Julie Haggerty who discard their possessions (and eventually, erroneously, their “nest egg”) to travel the country in a Winnebago, when he says to her, “This is like ‘Easy Rider’, only now it’s our turn!” I envision Jesse saying to Celine, “This is just like ‘Lost In America’, only now it’s our turn!” And then Celine saying, “Only I’m not going to be the numbnuts who gambles away all our money.” Pithy road trip ensues. Jesse and Celine in a moment of desperation wind up working together at a Sunglasses Hut. They are forced to borrow money from their twin daughters who have formed a successful synth pop duo.   

Odds: 9 – 1. 

Alex & Anna, “New York, I Love You.” 

I admit this could potentially be getting meta, only because Ethan Hawke’s character in “New York, I Love You” is technically part of the same short as Chris Cooper’s Alex and Robin Wright’s Anna. Nevertheless, as you may recall, Alex and Anna talk each other up on the sidewalk outside a restaurant over a cigarette as if they don’t know each other. Anna keeps referencing her "husband" waiting inside and, of course, the ultimate Reveal is that her "husband" is......Alex!!! Now, if you've seen "Before Midnight", you know they choose to conclude it with Jesse and Celine having a brief bout of play-acting. So, play-acting, cigarettes, a love once bloomed now shriveled? Yeah, this looks an awful lot like where our dear Jesse & Celine may end up.

Odds: 3-1. 

Before Midnight's Bitter Aftertaste

The first time I watched “Before Sunrise”, rented from Hollywood video on VHS (“Memory…all alone in the moonlight”), was a genuinely revelatory moment. This was early 1998, a tumultuous (relatively speaking) period in my life, and there was a sense of displacement the characters had – two people who did not know one another, wandering around all night in a city where they did not live, kind of untethered from their actual selves – that mirrored the way I felt. And the fact that the film was defiant to that displacement not with anger or depression or violence but with romance……well, you only need to read the name of this blog to know it hit me flush.

It comforted me, it still comforts me, and it’s a film to which I often turn when in most dire need of recalibration. It is simplistic to reduce something such as 9/11 to "The first movie I watched in its wake was..." but, nonetheless, the first movie I watched in its wake was, by very definite choice, "Before Sunrise."

I had never encountered a film quite like “Before Sunrise.” This was in the midst of the period where I was just becoming a cinemaphile, watching everything I could get my hands on – old, new, mainstream, out of left field, whatever, whichever – and so I still had “My Dinner With Andre” and a few Eric Rohmer films (whose ouvre I’m still too far behind on), courtesy of the late, great Roger Ebert’s recommendation, to come, which meant I soon realized other films preceding “Before Sunrise” struck the same sort of conversational tone. But……I’m Gen X. I’m from the slacker generation. I cut my teeth on the era of 90’s Indie. I “knew” Winona Ryder before she ever stole a thing. I had a pathetic goatee and pierced both my ears. I was soulful and idealistic, which is to say I was idiotic and clueless. I was Ethan Hawke’s character in “Before Sunrise."

Well, that’s not right. Let’s say, I liked to imagine I was Ethan Hawke's character in "Before Sunrise." Maybe even more than that I liked to imagine I was meeting a French girl on the train and falling in love. Was there wish fulfillment happening here? Sure there was, and I suppose owning up to it rules me out of order in objectively discussing the film. But then, as the film critic Dana Stevens has noted, "one of the oldest and most compelling reasons there is to go to the movies" is seeing something which we can admit "we'd like to be doing...too...and this is as close as we're ever gonna get."

That, and "Before Sunrise" is not necessarily a film I have ever claimed to examine objectively. While I have written too many words over the years on both it and its eventual 2004 sequel "Before Sunset", I have never written a proper review of either one. This is to say, I have never critiqued them, never appraised them analytically, at least not out loud and in print (or: on the internet). As someone who strives to be (or: likes to fancy himself) a film critic this, I admit, is essentially against the rules. And yet, Jesse and Celine are from a time when I was still just an innocent movie fan, when I didn’t scrutinize text for subtext and attempt to provide a “reading” of each film I viewed. Please don’t misunderstand, I think those things are vital in cinema discussion and I wholly understand and fully embrace the need of objective film criticism, but in penning my reviews I am always attempting to do so in my voice. The voice I hope to project (and I’m not certain I’m always successful) is one that strikes a balance between the emotional and critical, the sonnet and the evaluation.

So, basically, “Before Midnight” was the first Jesse & Celine film I watched mindful of both emotion and analysis. It was…..weird. I wrote a real review. I critiqued it to the best of my abilities. It left my friend Daryl wondering: “So, did you like it? I couldn’t tell.” I’m not sure I could tell either. Which is not to say the film isn’t good – nay, very good. It is. But it’s a sad movie – at first wistfully so and then, in its own way, darkly. The end, the very end, absolutely crushed me. It’s difficult to gauge its exact intention but I swear it wants to be upbeat. Except that I think it plays exactly the opposite. It’s akin to “Sex and the City” (don’t ask how I know this) when Carrie and Berger’s relationship is kinda, sorta on the rocks and they resort to a “bit” – a “Hollywood kiss” when they are “being pissy with each other.” Carrie tells Miranda this to which Miranda, incredulously, replies: “You guys need a bit?” That’s how the end of “Before Midnight” played to me. Jesse and Celine need a……bit? Jesse and Celine???

Which, of course, is what makes it so wondrously bold. I get it! I do! My friend Ryan at The Matinee captures this notion in a beautiful review, writing: "It’s a special moment when any film can make its audience think about these sorts of ideas surrounding love. That writer-director Richard Linklater made these characters confront it feels extra special.” That, though, is simultaneously the overriding dilemma I face. I may have watched “Before Midnight” critically, but I was still feeling it emotionally. But I was feeling it even more emotionally than I do most movies specifically because it’s these characters.

This is a no-man’s-land to which, I think, I have never ventured, stricken by a kind of cinematic cognitive dissonance. The film is a grand achievement, yet my relationship to the characters at the core of the film is too close and too personal. So while I understand that what the film is doing might very well make it great, the greatness with which it goes about doing it simply makes it all too much for me to bear.

Before Midnight

The "Before" films - that is, "Before Sunrise" (1995), "Before Sunset" (2004) and now "Before Midnight" - are known more for their incessantly free flowing conversational tone than their visual flair. The first two films were set, respectively, in Vienna and Paris and the third is set on the coast of Greece, and while scenic and historical locations are glimpsed they are never so much the point as what is being said in front of or around them.

Those first two films, however, did have one discernible motif. The first closed by re-visiting in quick successive shots each place the principal characters, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), had visited while orating. The second opened by displaying in the same quick, successive shots each place the duo was on the verge of visiting while orating. When "Before Midnight" finally conforms to this pattern it is fairly late in the proceedings, post-intensive argument in a semi-generic hotel room, and Jesse glances around at the few places in that room where they have just been. Unlike the preceding two films this is not a romanticized viewpoint - this seems to say: "Oh. A bunch of crap." Well, that's about right. What does life (love) eventually devolve into but a bunch of crap?

When last we saw Jesse and Celine, nine years ago in the capital of France where he had come on tour for the book he wrote about their one night together in the capital of Austria nine years before that, we were left wondering if he had abandoned his plane flight home to his wife and son to hook up with the Parisian woman for whom he never stopped pining. He did. And as "Before Midnight" opens he is sending his son on a plane flight back to the States after spending the summer in Greece with him. And with Celine. And with his and Celine's twin daughters.

The first time Jesse and Celine have a side-by-side conversation in their first film it is on a tram and they are sitting oh so close together, that way you sit when you mysteriously feel that much more of an electrical charge from almost touching as you do from actually touching. It is sweetly sexual. The first time Jesse and Celine have a side-by-side conversation in the third film it is in the family car, across a seat divider, buckled in, their sleeping twins visible in the backseat.

In other words, Jesse and Celine, the epitome of romance for a certain portion of my generation, are just another couple with a couple children and a minivan.

They have taken a holiday in Greece on a writer's retreat. This is crucial because these films are all about Jesse and Celine talking, and while they do talk on their minivan ride back from the airport, these early scenes are also very much about others talking. In fact, an elongated discussion at a dinner table, effortlessly shifting between philosophy, humor and affairs of the heart, features six other characters - the older author hosting the retreat and his companion, an older couple and younger couple - earning as many words as Jesse and Celine. The film, subtly, wonders how much our Gen X Sweethearts have to say to each other.

Oh, but they will converse, fear not, first on a long, seemingly unbroken walk to the town where a hotel room has been reserved and paid for in honor of their last night before returning home to France. This dialogue most closely resembles the previous films but then.....they watch the sun set, and it is, tellingly, the one time Jesse does not actually have some pithy, inane joke to tell. Even he seems able to sense what is coming.

The back half of "Before Midnight", in fact, recalls the whole of "Carnage", Roman Polanski's comedic and venomous exercise in claustrophobia. We watch, humored and horrified, as our dearest Jesse and Celine, the couple we know and love so well now seem to know each other so well that their love has gone lukewarm, snipe and pick and plead and confess and defend as if rationality and irrationality existed on the same plain. It is a back and forth as artfully drawn as their most whimsical powwows of the past, but darker and stained by years spent in each other's company rather than hours. Hawke's voice is noticeable for its gravel. Delpy, bravely, bares her breasts not in the form of erotica but to illustrate, for lack of a better term, Long Term Relationship Nudity - you know, that point when you barely notice your better half is nude.

Even more, the film, to its immense credit, takes no sides by allowing each side to make its own alternate version of sense and nonsense. It does not play so much as He Said/She Said as They Say. The things we think and do not say? Jesse and Celine say them. It's as if trying so hard to be selfless inevitably unlocks selfish feelings.

The film's final scene borders on a moment of reckoning, but in a much different way than the first two. The concept of the "midnight" of the title, in fact, is never addressed - as in, what happens at or after midnight? This underscores how time has sped up in their lives to such a degree that all its mile markers have just sort of blurred together. Sunrise, Sunset, Midnight, rinse, cycle, repeat. And Jesse, perhaps in a fit of desperation, attempts to both turn back that ever advancing clock and answer one of Celine's earlier queries by indulging in a bit of make believe. She resists. And resists. And finally, gives in.

Is it an affectionate moment? I honestly don't think so. It seems to me they have learned the depressing truth of how so many unions, like it or not, are sustained - pretend.

It's The Final Countdown

Tomorrow's the day. Finally. Uh, at least for us Chicagoans (my apologies to others). "Before Midnight." Jesse & Celine. One more time. I thought about pontificating yet again about these two characters and their two movies, these two characters and their two movies that have meant such an absurd amount to me for the last fifteen years. But then I thought.....nah. Not today. Not before tomorrow.

Today Jesse & Celine should just speak for themselves.

Celine: "When I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always late to school. One day she followed me to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees rolling on the sidewalk, ants crossing the road, the way a leaf casts a shadow on a tree trunk, little things. I think it's the same with people. I see little details so specific to each of them that move me and that I miss and will always miss. You can never replace anyone, because everyone is made of such beautiful specific details. Like I remember the way your beard has a little bit of red in it. And how the sun was making it glow that morning right before you left. I remember that and I missed it! I'm really crazy, right?"
Jesse: "All right, now I know for sure. You wanna know why I wrote that stupid book?"
Celine: "Why?"
Jesse: "So that you might come to a reading in Paris, and I could walk up to you and ask, 'Where the fuck were you?'"
Celine: "No, you think I'd be here today?"
Jesse: "I'm serious, I think I wrote it in a way to try to find you."
Celine: "OK, that's... I know that's not true, but that's sweet of you to say it."
Jesse: "I think it is true. What do you think the chances were of us ever meeting again?"
Celine: "After that December I'd say almost zero. If we're not real anyway, right? We're just characters in that old lady's dream. She's on her death bed fantasizing about her youth...so of course we have to meet again."
Jesse: "Oh, God. Why weren't you there in Vienna?"
Celine: "I told you why."
Jesse: "No, I know. I just... I wish you would've been. Our lives might have been so much different."
Celine: "You think so?"
Jesse: "I actually do."
Celine: "Maybe not. Maybe we would have hated each other eventually."
Jesse: "Oh, what, like we hate each other now?"
Celine: "You know, maybe we're only good at brief encounters, walking around in European cities in warm climate."
Jesse: "Why didn't we exchange phone numbers and stuff? Why didn't we do that?
Celine: "Because we were young and stupid?"
Jesse: "You think we still are?"

When I Accidentally Saw The Before Midnight Trailer

For the last month of my moviegoing there has been a simple rule – if attending the Landmark, which serves up the majority of Chicago’s indie fare (which means I’m there a lot), I sit on the aisle. I do this in the event the “Before Midnight” trailer appears and I need to make a fast exit to prevent myself from having any information spoiled. This past Saturday when I attended a showing of “At Any Price”, however, I made a mistake.

Perhaps the spring weather on the walk there had clouded my judgment. Perhaps the fact “At Any Price” was showing in the smallest theater and, thus, aisle seating was not the best viewing option took my mind off my rule. Whatever the case, I sat in the middle, between two couples. In the case of a trailer emergency, I was stuck.

There was a trailer emergency.

And you know what? It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The FIRST SHOT of the “Before Midnight” trailer gives away the essence of Jesse and Celine’s relationship. By the time I realized what trailer I was seeing, it was already too late. My thought process was honestly the following: “Oh. Hey. That’s Julie Delpy. I haven’t seen her in awhile. Is this – wait, that’s Ethan Hawke! This is……..oh, f---.”

So this is a warning, my fellow Tweed Jackets, that to see a split second of the trailer is to know what you don't want to know. I would advise to ask an usher if there is a trailer for "Before Midnight" before your chosen movie and, if so, just cool your heels in the hallway 'til the trailers are done.

Or watch the trailers with your ears covered and your eyes closed - like I did for the rest of the "Before Midnight" trailer once I realized that's what it was.

Summer Movie Q & A

It’s that time of year again! I recently “sat down” with Hollywood e-zine Film de Cinema (founder: Jiff Ramsey) for a Q & A regarding the upcoming summer movie season. As always, the following is the full “transcript”:

You know how excited people were for "The Dark Knight Rises" last summer? That's how excited Cinema Romantico is for "Before Midnight."

Film de Cinema: “Before Midnight”, the highly anticipated sequel to “Before Sunset”, expects to give us wistful closure regarding the greatest silver screen couple since Steve & Slim. Nearly every review has been a rave. For example-
Cinema Romantico: Earmuffs! EARMUFFS!!!
FdC: But don’t you just want to know-
CR: Don’t tell me a thing! Do you hear me?! NOT A THING! IF YOU RUIN EVEN THE MOST MINISCULE PLOT DEVELOPMENT, SO HELP ME GOD, I WILL HAVE MY VENGEANCE IN THIS LIFE OR THE NEXT!
FdC: But the trailer has been out there for a month!
CR: And do you know what it’s like living in fear of a trailer? Going to movies and having to sit in the seat next to the aisle – even if the theater is basically empty – so you can leap to your feet and dash to the lobby on the off chance the trailer might appear?
FdC: Okay, okay. Sorry. Yeesh. Talk about getting off on the wrong foot.
CR: My apologies. But this is Jesse and Celine. The rules are different.
FdC: Aside from “Before Midnight”, what film are you most anticipating this summer?

(Pause.)

FdC: Wait. What are you doing?
CR: What does it look like I’m doing?
FdC: It looks like you’re striking an attractively gloomy pose while listening to My Bloody Valentine.
CR: Precisely! So…….
FdC: So you must be mentally preparing for “The Bling Ring”! The new movie from one of your favorite directors, Sofia Coppola!




CR: Some people may be excited this summer for the theft escapades of “The Fast and the Furious 18: Furiouser & Furiouser” (filming of the 20th installment to begin this summer in the middle of the filming of the 19th installment) but I’m most excited for the theft escapades of “The Bling Ring.”
FdC: Do you think Vin Diesel would ever star in a Sofia film?
CR: She would make him sooooooooo fetch.
FdC: Will Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer as Tonto and “The Lone Ranger” be the movie duo of the summer?
CR: Actually the movie duo of the summer will be writer/director Noah Baumbach and his muse Greta Gerwig in “Frances Ha.”

The Summer Movie Duo of 2013

FdC: Wait, wait, wait. We’re discussing the summer movie season and so far all we’ve talked about is Linklater, Coppola and Baumbach. Where am I? Tribeca? What the hell is going on?
CR: I know! Isn’t it grand?! I’ve never looked forward to a summer movie season so much in my life!!!
FdC: But I feel like this is just a snobbish version of a summer movie Q&A. I feel like we’re losing the target audience. I mean, what’s next? You tell me there’s a movie starring...oh, I don't know, say, Julianne Moore as an English teacher coming out this summer?
CR: There is!!!!!!
FdC: Oh for the love of……let’s discuss the new Joss Whedon movie.
CR: You mean his quirky adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” that he filmed in black & white in his own house?!
FdC: (frantically flipping through notes) Okay……then let’s discuss “Man of Steel” with Michael Shannon as Zod.
CR: Or let’s discuss “Hitman” with Michael Shannon as real life contract killer Richard Kuklinksi!!!

Step aside, General Zod.

FdC: GAH!!! You at least want to see "Iron Man 3", don't you?
CR: Well, sure. But I'd rather see "Tony Stark."
FdC: As in, a movie all about Tony Stark?
CR: Exactly. We never see him in the Iron Man suit and it's just Tony and Pepper exchanging witty repartee "Big Sleep"-style all across L.A.
FdC: You understand, don't you, why you never became a Hollywood exec?
CR: (Sighs sadly.)
FdC: I’m contractually obligated to mention “The Hangover 3.”
CR: Wouldn't it be incredible if that trailer was totally a fake and the movie turned out to be the four of them just sitting around talking, drinking, eating pizza and watching "Caroline in the City" re-runs?
FdC: And "Star Trek: Into Darkness."
CR: Why are they so desperate to turn that into an action movie?
FdC: Why are you so convinced they are trying to that into an action movie?
CR: Tell me they're not trying to turn Spock into Liam Neeson! Tell.Me. I mean, really!

FdC: And "World War Z."
CR: It's funny, I had no idea what this was about and then I saw the trailer and realized I'd just seen the whole thing.
FdC: And “The Wolverine.”
CR: Why do I feel like every six months Hugh Jackman is onscreen as Wolverine?
FdC: And "Grown Ups 2."
CR: The The Fourth Circle Of Hell.
FdC: And “The Internship.”
CR: Can we PLEASE stop under-utilizing Rose Byrne?! I mean, REALLY!
FdC: And “The Great Gatsby.”
CR: Now you're talking, old sport.

Who else can't wait to hear Leo say "old sport" 225 times?

FdC: Well, obviously. (Throws up hands.) Honestly, this is the worst Summer Movie Preview on the Internet. The whole Internet. Who's going to want to read this thing? Everyone else is discussing Will and Jaden Smith in “After Earth”-
CR: Is that a sequel to Brit Marling's "Another Earth"?
FdC: -and we’re discussing-
CR: Sarah Polley's documentary about her family?
FdC: Come on, man, give me SOMETHING.
CR: Well, while I like to think I’m the sort who reads “Gatsby” and drinks martinis, I really do find Craig Robinson drinking his own urine out of the martini glass in the “This Is The End” trailer funny.
FdC: Okay. That’s better.
CR: And I really want to see “Now You See Me.” That’s my sort of summer movie – potentially interesting but still escapist.
FdC: Keep going.
CR: And “White House Down.” I can’t wait to see “White House Down.”
FdC: “White House Down”? THAT’S the one summer tentpole movie you want to see?
CR: I might even buy popcorn for it.
FdC: But it’s going to be awful.
CR: It better be. If that movie is any way intelligent, realistic or ‘good’, I’ll ask for my money back.
FdC: For the love of..... Well…at least we got through this whole thing without a Lady Gaga reference.
CR: “Machete Kills”! “Machete Kills” opens September 13th!!!

Lady Gaga stars in "Machete Kills", opening September 13th