The talking cure

Jesse and Celine: they walk, they talk, they kvetch, they philosophize, they love, they fight.

Fans have been following the peripatetic adventures of the two characters in Richard Linklater’s “Before” movies for 18 years now. First, the couple (played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) met by chance on a train in Vienna and walked around the city for one magical night in 1995’s Before Sunrise; nine years later, they met up in Shakespeare & Company, the quaint Paris bookstore, in 2004’s Before Sunset.

Now they’re back in Before Midnight, the third in the trilogy wherein two people just walk around and talk and figure out why they still hang around each other.

Thanks to Reality Multimedia, which is distributing the film for local audiences (because, let’s face it, an indie art film about two people walking and talking faces an uphill battle against the likes of Superman and Iron-Man sequels), Manila fans will finally find out what happened to Jesse and Celine after their reconnection in Before Sunset when the new movie hits theaters July 10.

And, as is the case with any real-life relationship: it’s complicated.

It’s interesting how Linklater’s films have developed a growing audience over the decades. The original low-budget film was a date movie with a brain: it showed how two people — a slacker American and a French girl, both in their early 20s — can make a connection that lasts forever. Or at least through a sequel or two.

My wife Therese and I loved that first movie so much, we spent part of our honeymoon in Vienna trying to revisit some of the places Jesse and Celine visited in Before Sunrise — the Prater ferris wheel, the cafés and trams — to somewhat hilarious effect. (All we got was tired feet. I wrote about it in an article called “Walkabout in Vienna” in 1996.)

Leo Po and Dondon Monteverde, heads of Reality Multimedia, are making a strategic gamble that Before Midnight will connect with Manila filmgoers, who are senti at heart. And judging by the movie’s autumnal yet romantic tone, and the continuing appeal of Hawke and Delpy, it seems like a safe gamble. (This third installment is already making bigger ripples than the first two, premiering at Sundance Festival and opening wide in the US, while also seeking Asian audiences.)

Without giving away too much, we open on Jesse saying goodbye to his 14-year-old son who is flying back to his mom (divorced from Jesse) in the US after spending a six-week vacation with the couple in Greece. Celine, meanwhile, is contemplating whether to accept a non-profit government job in Paris. This spurs the central conflict of Before Midnight, but what’s revelatory is how these two fictional characters — jointly written by Linklater, Hawke and Delpy — continue to grow with each installment. You feel like you know them. Maybe too well.

Gone are the fresh-faced Celine and the breezy slacker Jesse. These guys are grown up now. They’ve faced things like divorce, kids, and career dissatisfaction. They’ve matured, approximately at the same rate as the three writers have.

They’ve aged, too: Delpy’s got the frown lines to prove it, while Hawke’s voice has dropped to a craggy drawl. Jesse still has the floppish bangs and the half-beard (once a slacker, always a slacker), but also the crow’s feet. Celine is wider in the hips (Delpy apparently gained weight to play a mother; indeed, we see “more” of Delpy than ever before) and no less neurotic, worrying about the future of the planet and her own feminist freedom, and Jesse’s a successful writer (we knew that in Before Sunset) who has trouble tucking in his shirts.

This is a very talky movie. But anyone who watched the previous two movies knows this. They even expect it. Long before Aaron Sorkin mastered the “walk and talk” in TV’s The West Wing, Jesse and Celine were gabbing about everything: life, death, reality TV (which didn’t exist yet), ghosts and the soul’s journey. Linklater’s movies take us on a journey that is best encompassed in dialogue, in the exchange of ideas, and they all take place within a single day. These are “idea” movies, but they’re also romantic, and ring true to life, especially this third installment, which may be the most dramatic and truthful yet.

What happens when two people follow their dream of being together, after the credits fade, as they did on Nina Simone’s song Just in Time in the last film? Is it “happily ever after”? Or do they continue to deal with each other’s sh*t for as long as necessary? Well, anyone who knows about relationships will find a few grains of truth in Linklater’s depiction of the long haul. Life for long-term couples can become a power struggle, to some extent. There are moments of tenderness, humor, mutual concern in the movie, but also bouts of sniping and bitterness, past grievances, walkouts — all the material that makes up a real relationship. (Hey, I never said this one was a date movie.)

Young couples may want to start with the rose-colored glasses of Before Sunrise first. But when you get around to Before Midnight, you feel like you’ve had an actual relationship with these two. (One wonders if a future fourth installment — Before Menopause, maybe — looms on the horizon.)

Kudos to Linklater for bringing the trilogy full circle, referencing dialogue from the first film in a way that doesn’t seem schmaltzy or contrived (the stuff about the time machine is a master stroke). Kudos also to Delpy and Hawke for really engaging these characters in some head-to-head, high-stakes acting. It’s not pretty sometimes, but it gives the film indie cred. Kudos again to Linklater for not swerving from a decidedly non-commercial concept — walking and talking — that has made his Before films quiet little gems. And kudos to Reality Multimedia, a “boutique acquisition and media distribution company” which presented Before Midnight to us in preview screening and will bring it to Manila audiences on July 10.