Before Midnight (2013 film)

Before Midnight is a 2013 American romantic drama film, the third in a trilogy featuring two characters, following Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004). It was directed by Richard Linklater and stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Co-written by Linklater, Hawke and Delpy, the film picks up the story nine years after the events of Before Sunset; Jesse (Hawke) and Céline (Delpy) are now a couple, and spending a summer vacation in Greece with their children.

Before Midnight
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRichard Linklater
Produced byRichard Linklater
Christos V. Konstantakopoulos
Sara Woodhatch
Screenplay byRichard Linklater
Ethan Hawke
Julie Delpy
Based onCharacters
by Richard Linklater
and Kim Krizan
StarringEthan Hawke
Julie Delpy
Music byGraham Reynolds
CinematographyChristos Voudouris
Edited bySandra Adair
Production
company
Distributed bySony Pictures Classics
Release date
  • January 20, 2013 (2013-01-20) (Sundance)
  • May 24, 2013 (2013-05-24) (limited)
  • June 14, 2013 (2013-06-14) (wide)
Running time
109 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
Greece
LanguageEnglish, Greek
Budget$3 million[2]
Box office$23.3 million[3]

Following a limited opening in May, the film was released wide in June 2013 and grossed over $23 million worldwide. Like the previous films in the trilogy, Before Midnight received widespread acclaim, and it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

It was filmed in the home once owned and inhabited until his death by Patrick Leigh Fermor and his wife Joan built in Kardamyli, on the Peloponnese coast in Southern Greece.

Plot

Nine years have passed since Before Sunset. Jesse and Céline have become a couple and parents to twin girls. Jesse struggles to maintain his relationship with his teenage son, Hank, who lives in Chicago with his mother, Jesse's ex-wife. Jesse is now a successful novelist, while Céline is at a career crossroads, considering a job with the French government. After Hank spends the summer with Jesse and Céline on the Greek Peloponnese peninsula, Jesse experiences a disconnect with Hank when he drops him off at the airport to fly home and reflects on his inability to be a good father to him.

The couple discuss their concerns about Hank, and then about Céline's career. Over dinner they talk more about love and life with friends. Two of the friends staying with them have prepaid for a hotel room for Jesse and Céline so that they can have a night alone. While walking to the hotel, the couple reminisce about their first meeting and wonder whether they would still be attracted to each other if they were strangers.

After reaching the hotel and checking in, they begin to get intimate and prepare to have sex but are interrupted by a brief phone call from Hank, who seems to have bonded with Céline more than he has with Jesse. The couple eventually have a fierce argument, expressing fears about their present and future together. Among other issues, Jesse wants them to consider moving to Chicago so he can be closer to Hank, which Céline thinks will cost her any chance of a career outside her family. In the heat of the argument, Céline tells Jesse she no longer loves him.

Céline leaves their room and sits alone in the hotel's outdoor restaurant. Jesse joins her and jokes that he is a time traveler (referencing their first meeting) bringing her a letter from her 82-year-old self, describing this night as one of the best of their lives. Unamused, Céline says their fantasies will never match the imperfect reality. Jesse proclaims his love, saying he does not know what else she could want. After a moment, Céline joins in Jesse's joke, and the two reconcile.

Cast

Production

Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy had all discussed doing a sequel to Before Sunset (or the third in a trilogy). In November 2011, Hawke said that he, Delpy and Linklater

"have been talking a lot in the last six months. All three of us have been having similar feelings, that we're kind of ready to revisit those characters. There's nine years between the first two movies and, if we made the film next summer, it would be nine years again, so we started thinking that would be a good thing to do. So we're going to try and write it this year."[4][5]

In June 2012, Hawke confirmed that the sequel to Before Sunset would be filmed that summer.[6] Soon after, Delpy denied filming would take place that year.[7] But by August 2012, numerous reports emerged from Messenia, Greece, that the film was being shot there.[8]

The completion of filming the sequel, titled Before Midnight, was announced on September 5, 2012.[9] Linklater said that, after ten weeks of writing and rehearsing, the film was made in fifteen days for less than $3 million.[2] He intended to take it to a film festival in early 2013.[10]

Release

Before Midnight premiered on January 20, 2013, at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.[11] It had its international premiere out of competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.[12]

The film opened to general audiences on May 24, 2013, at five theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas.[13] It was released wide in 897 theaters on June 14, 2013.[14]

Box office

The film grossed $8,110,621 domestically and $15,141,309 overseas, for a worldwide gross of $23,251,930.[3]

Critical reception

Like the previous entry of the trilogy, Before Midnight received widespread critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 98% based on reviews from 203 critics, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The site's consensus is: "Building on the first two installments in Richard Linklater's well-crafted Before trilogy, Before Midnight offers intelligent, powerfully acted perspectives on love, marriage, and long-term commitment."[15] Metacritic gives the film a score of 94 out of 100, based on reviews from 41 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". It was listed as the third-best film of the year after 12 Years a Slave and Gravity.[16] It was the second-best reviewed film of 2013 according to Rotten Tomatoes, after Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity.[17]

According to Total Film's Philip Kemp,

"As with its two predecessors — and with the films of French New Wave director Éric Rohmer, presiding deity of this kind of cinema—Midnight's essentially a film about people talking. But when the talk's this good, this absorbing and revealing and witty and true, who's going to complain?... [It's a] more-than-worthy, expectation-exceeding chapter in one of modern cinema's finest love stories. As honest, convincing, funny, intimate and natural as its predecessors."[18]

Perry Seibert of AllMovie also praised the film, writing: "The screenwriting trio fill the movie with long, discursive conversations (there are only two scenes in the first 20 minutes) that feel utterly improvised when they are performed, but are far too deftly structured to be anything other than the work of consummate artists."[19] Eric Kohn, from Indiewire, gave the film a rave review, adding it to his list of Top 10 Films of 2013. He wrote that "With Before Midnight, Richard Linklater has completed one of the finest movie trilogies of all time."[20]

Accolades
Award / Film Festival Date Category Recipient(s) and nominee(s) Result
Academy Awards[21] March 2, 2014 Best Adapted Screenplay Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke Nominated
AARP Annual Movies for Grownups Awards[22] January 6, 2014 Best Screenwriter Richard Linklater (with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke) Won
Austin Film Critics Association Awards[23][24] December 17, 2013 Best Film Before Midnight Nominated
Best Austin Film Richard Linklater Won
Bodil Awards[25] February 1, 2014 Best US Feature Richard Linklater Nominated
Boston Online Film Critics Association[26] December 8, 2013 Ten Best Films of the Year Before Midnight Won
Best Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Won
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards[27][28] December 16, 2013 Best Screenplay: Adapted Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
Critics' Choice Awards[29][30] January 16, 2014 Best Adapted Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
Louis XIII Genius Award Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Won
Denver Film Critics Society[31][32] January 13, 2014 Best Adapted Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
Detroit Film Critics Society[33] December 13, 2013 Best Film Before Midnight Nominated
Best Actress Julie Delpy Nominated
Best Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
Golden Globe Awards[34] January 12, 2014 Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Julie Delpy Nominated
Gotham Awards[35] December 2, 2013 Best Film Before Midnight Nominated
Hollywood Film Festival[36] October 17, 2013 Screenwriter(s) of the Year Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Won
Houston Film Critics Society Awards[37] December 15, 2013 Best Picture Before Midnight Nominated
Best Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
Indiana Film Critics Association[38] December 16, 2013 Best Film Before Midnight Nominated
Best Adapted Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Won
Independent Spirit Awards[39][40] March 1, 2014 Best Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
Best Female Lead Julie Delpy Nominated
Los Angeles Film Critics Association[41] December 8, 2013 Best Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Won
National Society of Film Critics[42] January 4, 2014 Best Actress Julie Delpy Nominated
Best Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Won
New York Film Critics Online[43] December 8, 2013 Best Picture Before Midnight Nominated
Best Films of 2013 Before Midnight Won
Online Film Critics Society Awards[44] December 16, 2013 Best Film Before Midnight Nominated
Best Actress Julie Delpy Nominated
Best Adapted Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
San Diego Film Critics Society[45] December 11, 2013 Best Adapted Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Won
San Francisco Film Critics Circle[46] December 13, 2013 Best Adapted Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
Satellite Awards[47][48] February 23, 2014 Best Adapted Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards[49][50] December 16, 2013 Best Adapted Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
Best Art-House or Festival Film Before Midnight Nominated
Toronto Film Critics Association[51][52] December 16, 2013 Best Adapted Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
Best Actress Julie Delpy Nominated
Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards[53] December 9, 2013 Best Adapted Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated
Women Film Critics Circle[54] December 16, 2013 Screenwriting Award Julie Delpy Won
Best Equality of Sexes Before Midnight Won
Best Screen Couple Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke Won
Writers Guild of America Award[55] February 1, 2014 Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Nominated

^[I] Each date is linked to the article about the awards held that year.

Top ten lists

According to Metacritic, the film appeared on the following critics' top 10 lists of 2013.[56]

The A.V. Club film critics named "The fight" scene the Scene of the Year.[75]

Footnote
  1. ^ The "Castle Rock Entertainment" logo does not appear in this film's opening.

References
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