Before Midnight

Have you seen the beautifully romantic films Before Sunrise and Before Sunset? Well, director Richard Linklater has now made a third film in the series, Before Midnight...

...which premiered this week at Sundance to rave reviews. (Slate says it's "so good it approaches perfection.")

Starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, Before Midnight follows the characters Jesse and Celine as they spend a day in Greece. It's been almost two decades since they first met on a Vienna-bound train, and nine years since they spent another afternoon together in Paris. True to form, the two characters stroll around town together, discussing their hopes, fears and dreams. As Slate says, these are "unusual and acclaimed films, consisting almost entirely of dialogue between a man and woman." What's so fascinating is that Jesse and Celine clearly have a once-in-a-lifetime connection; the romantic tension is palpable. Whether or not they'll get together has always been the big question.

Slate says the dialogue between the twosome "as expected, is pitch-perfect...In a manner arguably unequaled in film, Before Midnight captures exactly just what makes it so infuriatingly hard to stay in any relationship."

"Over the course of one day, [many issues] come bubbling to the fore in bursts of heady, hyperliterate conversations that are this franchise's trademark pleasure," writes New York Magazine's Vulture blog. "And, in one bravura scene that Delpy plays completely topless, [they discuss] is there really such a thing as 'soul mates,' or do age and time conspire to wear down what once was intoxicating, perfect love?"

The film has been kept surprisingly quiet—no trailer yet!—but it seems to have a September release date. I can't wait. Are you, too, dying to see it?


And below are a few photos from the first two movies (does Julie Delphy just not age?!)...

Before Sunrise (1995), in their twenties spending a night together in Vienna:

Before Sunset (2004), in their thirties spending an afternoon together in Paris:
P.S. Another great movie that Julie Delpy wrote, directed and starred in.