BEFORE MIDNIGHT

Writer-director Richard Linklater has once again partnered Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy to bring the third instalment of his Before… films. Before Midnight follows on from 2004’s Before Sunset, adding a further dimension to the story that began 18 years ago with the original, Before Sunrise.

This trio of gentle, poignant films follows cross-cultural couple Jesse (American) and Celine (French) as their romance evolves across the years. In Before Sunrise they meet on a train on the way to Vienna and fall in love during the course of one night’s exploration of the romantic city. In Before Sunset they meet again nine years later, after Jesse has written a book about their experience. This time they wander around Paris, and the flame is once again reignited, despite the intervening years and the baggage they have both accumulated.

Fast forward another nine years and the couple are in Messinia, Greece, on a family holiday. They are finally together – they are even parents to cherubic twin girls – but their union is far from perfect.

This third instalment has been long-awaited by fans of the films, and it carries many of the hallmarks of the preceding two. Hawke, Delpy and Linklater worked on the screenplay together, and the result is dialogue, which captures perfectly the meanderings of authentic speech, the way old resentments can be dragged up by the briefest phrase, the manner in which men and women communicate differently. It is a credit to Hawke and Delpy that their conversations seem so genuine. Their interchanges are transfixing – you really do feel as if you are spying on a couple’s most intimate moments.

This film is broader in scope than the other two in that it plays out in more than one location, and has subsidiary cast members, but Linklater still makes the most of his intense focus on the couple. The camera simply follows them as they walk, talk, sit, dwell and argue. There are few close-ups, which means that as an audience we are able to see how their body language and use of space is crucial to their interactions.

This is really about how there is no such thing as a happy ending. What does happen when star-crossed lovers are at last given the opportunity to be together? They quarrel tirelessly – about parenting duties, about jobs, about how they make love. Neither character is perfect because no one in real life is perfect. Hawke’s Jesse is the romantic of the two, yet he is no romantic hero. He is idealistic, needy and occasionally selfish. Delpy shines as passionate Frenchwoman Celine but with her irrational temper, she is not always likeable.

Yet as we shadow the couple during their evening, we root for them fiercely. Linklater has yet again created an almost flawless film in showcasing the flawed nature of human relationships.

On release from 21 June.