With the ideal set, midnight approaches, and the pieces start falling apart. Celine and Jesse descend to their worst traits, which in fact are the same ones they used to win each other over almost 20 years earlier, only this time they are performed to malicious ends.
There was always a risk that, by letting Celine and Jesse be together at last, Before Midnight might shatter the very promise of the first two movies. Their days together in Vienna and Paris always had the feeling of a daydream; the true romance lay in imagining the possibility of what came after.
This is the pivotal moment, for the couple and for the series: with the pieces on the ground, do you choose to rebuild? In many ways, Before Midnight shows Jesse and Celine brought down to earth, finding it harder to hide in their romanticism. A movie that tells us, while piercing holes through a fairy tale, that if love is to be more than just commitment, we must still commit to love.
It is here that Jesse tentatively half-raises the possibility of uprooting Celine and the girls from Europe and relocating the family to Chicago, where he could at least see his son every other weekend. What is remarkable is how quickly Celine sees through this still-inchoate maneuver, and how fiercely she puts her dukes up against it. She rightly judges his sense of paternal duty toward Hank as too little too late, and if anything a potential fleeing of his responsibility toward her and the girls.
She is also furious at him for not appreciating the important government job offer she is considering, which would keep her in Paris.
The third scenic unit is a long outdoor luncheon with friends and neighbors, in which the discussion roams from new technology to the creative process, but inevitably keeps circling around the differences between men and women, and what it might take to keep love alive between them.
She does a hilarious send-up of a bimbo gushing over Jesse upon learning he is a Writer. In turn, Jesse affects a Latin lover growl, alternately Spanish or Greek, as a come-on. Underneath the parodies they seem to be fumbling to find some way back to their original romantic spark. No longer able to wow the other with their everyday natures, they try on different personae. This role-playing is indicative of a larger problem: the unstable, provisional self. They are stuck acting the part of grown-ups while trying to remain forever young, true to their adolescent dreams, their limitless desire to get the most out of life.
In any case, we know from Before Sunrise that they are generational impostors: Celine often thinks of herself as an old woman pretending to be young, and Jesse often feels like a year-old boy. Their friends, volunteering to babysit the twins, have given them the present of a night alone together in a luxurious hotel. So begins the fourth act, a long, rambling Steadicam walk through the Greek island, in which the couple alternately make nice and spar.
They know they are supposed to be having a romantic, sexy evening, but the conversation keeps revolving around kids and mutual mistrust. In the second movie, "Before Sunset," the couple met and rekindled their romance. This time they possess each other with a familiarity created by coexistence. Before, they could only guess what was going on in each other's minds. They can be lethal in discussion because they know exactly where to hit; which old wound to squeeze; which sour memory of the past to dredge up, and when.
Linklater and his actors expose small fissures with an admirable subtlety. As it happens in every relationship that's endured for years, Celine and Jesse have accumulated countless shared memories, hurts and fights. They can instantly recognize the subtext of the most trivial comments made to each other, and use their knowledge of one another to fan a spark of hostility into a bonfire.
A single remark made to appease one partner could accidentally awaken resentments that were assumed dead or forgotten. In one scene, Celine makes a joke that is silly on its surface but has a cruel subtext; seconds later, she glances at Jesse to assess the effect of the hit. When Celine asks Jesse if he would invite her to get off the train if they had met right this instant, his hesitation reveals not his doubt about the love he felt and still feels for her, but his difficulty in re-imagining his wife as an idealized, perfect muse.
Which isn't to say that the enchanting young lovers of "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset" have been reduced to embittered middle-aged squabblers. Those charmers are still there; you just have to squint to see them. During that goodbye, his son mentions that a proposed visit is a bad idea, "because Mom hates you so much.
This life with Celine was, for years, all that he wanted, and the primary preoccupation of his imagination. But now it's a reality, and reality is messier than the flights of fantasy in fiction.
That realization becomes clearer as the particulars of Jesse and Celine's situation reveal themselves. As his son indicated, relations with Jesse's ex-wife are strained; "Why do you think she still hates me so much?
The infrequent visits of the long-distance relationship with his son are getting to Jesse "I just don't think I can keep doing this" , and he asks her to consider moving to Chicago, so he can be "more present" in his son's life. Celine resists. And it is this bit of tension—a question of geography, not of love or lust—that calls their entire relationship into doubt over the course of Before Midnight' s long evening.
The centerpiece of that evening, and of the film, is an encounter in a hotel room, played out in 30 minutes of real time. Their Greek friends have booked the room for the couple and are taking care of their twins, so that they can have a night to themselves, and with simple plotting and stage direction, the scene masterfully examines how a couple can blow a sure thing for themselves.
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