Linklater brings a tired genre to life

Rating: Null/10 (26 September 2007)

This is a review of "Before Sunrise", "Before Sunset" and "Before Midnight", three films by Richard Linklater.
Released in 1995, "Before Sunrise" finds Ethan Hawke playing Jesse, a young American who's travelling across Europe. On his way to Vienna he meets Celine (Julie Delpy), a young woman on her way to Paris. From the moment out duo lock eyes, they're drawn to each other. They share a meal, savouring the conversation more than the food, and when they arrive in Vienna, Jesse persuades Celine to keep him company wandering the streets. Thus begins an unforgettable screen romance.
Like most of Linklater's films, "Sunrise" is both dialogue heavy and boils down to a series of discussions or ruminations on life. Our duo talk incessantly, touching upon subjects which range from language and reincarnation to sexuality and religion. Some of it is cringe-worthy, but for the most part Linklater's dialogue rings true. His banter is casual, natural, lacking in artifice, and we at times feel like voyeurs, eavesdropping on the sort of "unimportant" dialogue that most films shy away from.
But the film is sexy as well. Celine and Jesse crackle with electricity, and Linklater pays great attention to subtle shifts in body language. There's one scene where Jesse restrains himself from brushing away a stray lock of Celine's hair, and another wonderful moment in a music listening booth where our duo nervously avoid eye contact. Elsewhere the film indulges in numerous long takes, Linklater's gliding camera making the most of some gorgeous European locales, as he dips in and out of romantic alcoves and cosy spaces. Linklater's long steadicam takes lend "Sunrise" an "energy" and intimacy that many of his other films lack.
Released in 2004, Linklater's "Before Sunset" is a sequel to 1995's "Sunrise". Equally good, the film joins Celine and Jesse almost a decade later. Speaking to both the mind and the heart, it finds our duo still obsessed with the night they first met, fell in love, and then somehow forgot to exchange contact details. This time around Jesse is in Paris to promote his new novel (he's now a writer), and it is Celine who tracks him down. Our couple then embark on an 80 minute chat, the fact that Jesse must leave on an afternoon flight tightening like a hang-man's noose around their conversations. The film then ends with a sequence which packs an emotional wallop.
Hawke and Delpy so easily re-inhabit these characters, you have to wonder how much they're based on themselves. Simultaneously dopey and intelligent, their conversations cycle through hilarity, pain and misery. On the downside, both characters are obviously the product of an artist; Celine and Jesse are a couple of unashamed hipsters.
Once again Linklater utilises long, uninterrupted takes, his gliding camera capturing vast chunks of banter and beautiful Parisian architecture. A few gentle flashbacks give glimpses of the original film, but we don't really need them. This story stands on its own as a second chance to change fate. And as is typical of Linklater, cinema's chief slacker-philosopher (at least since the death of Hal Ashby), Linklater has his film abstract several profound human truths, placing them all in a series of dialogue driven vignettes. In a way, Jesse and Celine become everyone and everything, and at times represent more than themselves.
Released in 2013, "Before Mightnight" finds Jesse and Celine as a committed couple. It's been eight years since we last saw them, and they now live in Europe with twin girls of their own. Unsurprisingly, the puppy-love of the first two films has given way to middle-aged weariness, parental responsibility, regret and pragmatism. The film is somber, even pessimistic, and Linklater cleverly introduces several other characters who represent life and love at different stages, most notably an elderly writer and a young couple who conjure up images of Jesse and Celine's own romance almost two decades ago.
If "Sunset" and "Sunrise" evoked Eric Rohmer, or Bresson's "Four Nights of a Dreamer", "Midnight" recalls Abbas Kiarostami and Rossellini's "Journey to Italy". Again dialogue heavy, and again reliant on long takes, the film is colder, harder and more caustic than its predecessors. Our couple now view everything with scepticism, and seem to exude a mood of grim acceptance and resignation. Most of the film's conversation revolve around death, career disappointment, transience, the world ending or technology's negative influences; the rants of a dying generation. At one point Celine even paints a dour image of the future, in which society devolves into "masturbation and death". In another, Jesse insists that man is "99 percent automated" and even goes so far as to denounce the concept of self-hood. Other conversations mock the way men measure accomplishments, and of course male obsessions with the phallus. Elsewhere an elderly man explains that couples are "never one person, always two".
Unlike its predecessors, "Midnight's" sceptical of romance and even soul-mates. After a wholly contrived argument in a hotel room, a forced segment designed to set up another sequel, our duo then seem to patch up their problems, though you nevertheless suspect that this relationship has reached its end. Expect a possible fourth film to be about loneliness or separation.
Early in "Midnight", Jesse reveals to us characters in his new book. One character lives in an unending, wondrous present (the very behaviour that brought Jesse and Celine together so many years ago), whilst another views all experiences as being "second hand". Jesse later talks about being "lost in perception" and introduces us to the "patron saint of eyesight", moments which exemplify Celie and Jesse's own anxieties. Both fantasise about different, better futures, and both are unsure of their partner's role in this desired world.
9/10 – Whilst as good as its predecessor, "Sunset" may rub people the wrong way. The idea of successful, self-reflexive, middle class hipsters incessantly yapping, will prove irksome to many.