JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Usually we hate it when people are talking during the movies, and we have issued picturesque threats to viewers who won’t shut up, but when we saw Before Midnight last week we were surrounded by chatty moviegoers and it felt right. These were not hipsters demonstrating their familiarity with the oeuvre of Richard Linklater (a group that may be even more annoying than fanboys loudly declaring their in-depth knowledge of the source material—If they knew so much, why weren’t they discussing in Klingon?); these were senior citizens at an afternoon screening, married couples who could really relate to the onscreen couple. They weren’t talking amongst themselves, they were talking to the screen, to Celine and Jesse.

“Ayan, inungkat na ang nakaraan!” (There, they’re raking up the past!) someone chortled as Celine reminded Jesse of some fan she had suspected him of sleeping with. “Di pa rin matuloy!” (Interrupted again!) someone else cried as the bickering couple started putting their clothes back on. “Ang ikli!” (Too short!) was the general conclusion as two hours of onscreen talking came to a close. They were into it, they were engaged, they saw themselves in the characters. And they laughed a lot. It was great.

In Before Midnight, the third in the trilogy (Who knows, maybe they’ll make some more) of largely two-character talkathons by director Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, we catch up with Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy) nine years after the events in Before Sunset. That one ended with a cliffhanger: Will Jesse miss his flight home to the US and stay in Paris with Celine whom he met on the train to Vienna nine years earlier and spent the night with?

The fact that this movie exists answers that question. Before Midnight rounds out the trilogy beautifully: the first movie is about young love, the second about the possibility of catching the one that got away, and this one is about what happens when you have achieved your romantic ideal. You have to live together, a situation that entails dealing with the fact that the ideal is a real human being with real failings and annoying habits that can drive one to distraction. This is why fairy tales end at “They lived happily ever after”—nobody’s interested in what happens next. What for? Arguing about chores and who gets to pick up the kids from school and living within a budget is not romantic. It is, however, the stuff of comedy, and Before Midnight is the funniest in the trilogy.

So Ethan Hawke looks a bit run-down and paunchy, and it turns out Frenchwomen do put on weight (Butter spares no one), but that’s life. Not those incredible Hollywood romcoms where everyone is perfectly plasticine in their 40s. This is what comes after that sexy Nina Simone impression that changes people’s lives hahahaha! We recommend this movie highly. Unless you don’t like talky movies, in which case: Shut up, no one wants to hear about it.