Before Midnight (2013)
Film details
Romance · Drama · Richard Linklater · 1h 48min
Synopsis
It has been nine years since we last met Jesse and Celine, the French-American couple who once met on a train in Vienna. They now live in Paris with twin daughters but have spent a summer in Greece at the invitation of an author colleague of Jesse's. When the vacation is over and Jesse must send his teenage son off to the States, he begins to question his life decisions, and his relationship with Celine is at risk.
Verdict
Honest and mature portrayal of marriage in crisis, without ideology but with adult content.
In-depth analysis
Linklater closes his trilogy with an unflinching and honest portrait of mature marriage. Jesse and Celine, now parents with almost two decades of shared history, confront the crisis that emerges when initial passion yields to the weight of daily life, parental responsibilities, and postponed dreams. The film is almost pure dialogue: long conversations that oscillate between tenderness, nostalgia, resentment, and despair. It neither idealizes love nor destroys it — it simply shows it as it is: a commitment that is renewed or broken each day. The script avoids easy solutions and respects the complexity of two people who love each other but do not always endure each other. For adult couples, it is a work of unsparing honesty that invites reflection on fidelity, forgiveness, and the daily choice to remain. The language is strong — the arguments are realistic, unfiltered — and there is a scene of clear physical intimacy, though not graphic. It is not a family film, nor does it have an ideological agenda: it is auteur cinema that addresses conjugal love with the seriousness it deserves.