Before Midnight

It doesn't matter how beautifully something started, eventually everything ends. And so we have the second sequel to 1995's Before Sunrise, in Richard Linklater's Before Midnight. Reprising their roles from the original (and 2004's Before Sunset), stars Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke are now a committed couple, living in France with their twin daughters. Spending a last night of summer vacation in Greece with friends, the now forty-something lovers begin to reexamine their lives together. If Before Sunrise was about all the unknown possibilities ahead of us, Before Midnight finds a more melancholy chord by checking off what could have been. Filtered through Hawke and Delpy's intimate performances (and wonderful dialogue, which they co-wrote), the film takes some inspiration from Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. The emotionally-naked fight that makes up most of the movie's third act percolates in the background of early scenes, while maintaining an intense honesty when it finally erupts. —Jacob Boon