It has been nine years since moviegoers last saw Jesse and Celine, director Richard Linklater’s lost-and-found lovers, and at that point the couple’s future together was uncertain.
If you are one of those people who demand to see movies in a state of ignorance as pure as Rip Van Winkle getting up from his nap, then I beg you, look at the star rating above, and turn straight to the movie clock. Otherwise, please know that this wise and mature follow-up to “Before Sunrise” (1995) and “Before Sunset” (2004) is a wonderful film whether or not you’ve been “spoiled” and whether or not you’ve seen the previous installments.
The first film followed Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), then in their early 20s, for one night together in Vienna; the second showed them meeting again in Paris, after both moved on to other partners and lives. Now Jesse and Celine are nine years and two kids into a marriage in all but name. Events take place on the last day of their vacation in southern Greece, the ruins around them quietly speaking of onrushing time.
This movie opens with Jesse about to put his son on a return flight to the States. The boy is polite but has his mind on other things, as Jesse tries for the deep-and-meaningful goodbye he isn’t going to get.
Jesse and Celine (Julie Delpy) drive back to where they’re staying, with what we soon learn are their twin daughters asleep in the backseat. They tiptoe around possible triggers for a spat. Jesse’s worried about being separated from his son, who’s living with his embittered ex-wife; Celine has a tempting job offer.
They’re visiting the spectacular home of an elderly writer (Walter Lasally). Also at the house are a beautiful young couple (Yannis Papadopoulos and Ariane Labed) who serve as reminders of what Jesse and Celine used to be, and an artsy couple (Panos Koronis and Athina Rachel Tsangari) who evoke a life without so many responsibilities.
Linklater (who wrote the script with Delpy and Hawke) stages a dinner for this group with a precise eye for the performative nature of parties — curiosity versus politeness, remarks made for effect, the discomfort as a couple’s jokes take on more edge than they should.
The artsy couple has paid for a romantic evening for Jesse and Celine, just the two of them, at a hotel. As they walk down the hill through the fading light of a perfect Greek day (gorgeously handled by cinematographer Christos Voudouris), Jesse and Celine are sliding inexorably toward an epic and revelatory fight.
And when it comes, he calls her crazy, she responds that he’s passive-aggressive. She rages about the career compromises that life forced on her, but not him; he flashes back that she forgets the things he does. It’s horribly real, and yet that’s deceptive.
No couple’s all-out fight is ever this witty, this coherent, this impeccably timed. Hawke and Delpy inhabit these people so deeply that the wordy dialogue seems as natural as something overheard from the next apartment.
The labor of pairing off is a classic theme for a movie, with a comforting finish when love triumphs. But finding romance is easy. Staying together is hard. Making a movie this warm, funny, and rigorously truthful about lovers trying to remain partners is even harder.