autumnsoliloquy90 | before midnight (2013) (Reply)

I realize I really have this thing for the Golden Trinity of Director plus his two actor-muses making a trilogy about love. One trilogy would be Wong Kar-wai's loosely connected parallel universes of Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen, and the other would be this: Richard Linklater's Before films.

Can't even begin to coherently describe my love for this series. Before Sunrise and Before Sunset hold a lot of meaning for me. To the extent that I would even say they shaped a lot of my romantic ideals post-adolescence. They were a nice healthy mix of optimism and fantasy and realism and cynicism that I could subscribe to. I love to snoop into people's lives, and the films' pseudo-voyeuristic style caters to that. They didn't have grand tragedies or huge bombastic displays of all-consuming passionate romance but there's just so much character development in them that you start to sort of feel like... as if they're real--real-life friends.

I watched Midnight at some hipster-looking cinema in the middle of some uppity suburban area, the only cinema actually showing it in English. Why I made a reservation beats me, because in the end there were only two middle-aged couples and another single lady presumably.

Jesse, as we knew from Sunset, has a son from his previous marriage, who lives in the US and therefore sees him only very rarely. Reminds me of what Jesse said about his parents in Sunrise, that he was very happy once his parents finally divorced and stopped arguing. Clearly in Midnight we see that his son prolly shares this sentiment with his dad's younger self, but it's interesting to see Jesse the father actually see it differently and worry about the impact of the divorce on his son.

Jesse and Celine's chemistry after twins and living with each other for ten years is still amazing. I wonder if they went through the classic "seven year itch"? Whatever, it seems at least they have overcome that. And though the stuff they talk about are mundane and they fight, they never stop arguing -- but you know, I think that's a good sign. Silence is the worst sound in any relationship I think. Whatever isn't said piles up in the garbage dump until all the toxic wastes suffocate both of you.

Their twins are named after Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald!! And this, my dears, is why I love Jesse and Celine. Fucking cool people.

Celine is so typical independent white woman struggling with balancing career, romance and children. I mean, I love her and all, and I still find that she's a good prototype for a feminist role model, but she also highlights the problem with such women. They want everything. And when they have everything, they want everything to be PERFECT. Now, I can relate, and I'm sure one day I will come to a point in life when I'd channel Celine's fictional spirit, but seriously Celine, you're awesome, but just cos you're a strong independent woman doesn't give you the right to be self-entitled either.

Jesse is so boring. Lol. He really is. That guy whose house they were staying at in Greece, he said he'd never met a writer whose partner was more interesting. Ditto. It's like middle age made Jesse into this boring, cliched typical American writer. Yawns. But I guess that's what I like about Jesse. He isn't that grand. He's got very relateable issues, considering the fact that he's uhhhh in his 40s. And male. And white.

It's weird that there's finally a sex scene in a Before movie. Usually it's off-screen or implied or whatever, basically left to our own imagination. But here we get a full load of Julie Delpy's tits (and by God, I want boobies like that especially in my 40s and post-childbirth). It's one of the major things that basically made midnight have a very different feel from the first two movies. Besides, here they're surrounded by other people all the time, friends, their children; they're no longer an island onto itself in the middle of European cities in warm weather. I guess it feels less like a realistic fantasy that Sunrise and Sunset were, but more... 2013. Yeah, for some reason, the individual films really capture the zeitgeist of their respective decades.

There's a lot of little scenes I liked: the widow talking about living her life without a husband in a non-melodramatic but still poignant way, the part where they were talking about why they never entered marriage, even the arguments were entertaining to watch.

I liked Midnight and it was definitely above my expectations, and it was a great way to end the series off, with this They-Lived-Unhappily-Ever-After ending; again, a good mixture of optimism and pessimism. It's a nice reminder of what's to come for most of us, indeed the shit depicted there captures beautifully the complexities of marriage and its modern variants. But I guess my fave is still Before Sunrise cos you know, that's where it all started after all? And they were so young, and idealistic, and more relateable to me definitely at this point in my life. And it's really got that 90's feel and Vienna is the most awesome of all the three locations; how I wish I could live there.

Really hyped about the fact that Jesse and Celine were based on Richard Linklater's own experience, which sadly ended up fading away into obscurity like most relationships do, and ended with tragedy. So Before Sunrise was like his alternate reimagination of a possible outcome, had they done things differently. And I also read that Ethan Hawke's sexagenarian mom recently reconnected with an old flame and now they're together, and that could be a nice sequel to the trilogy; a sort of epilogue like "What if Before Sunset never happened?", and it'll be like an old-people-romance movie.

I really hope this isn't the end of the series. For some reason, it's like saying goodbye to old-time friends you really knew intimately.