Sydney Film Festival 2013 - Film Review - Before Midnight

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy - Before Midnight

Richard Linklater's film starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy is a tedious affair resembling a endless, trivial conversation shot with a single continuous take - but lasting over one and a half hours. An American man, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and a French woman, Celina (Julie Delpy) now close to middle age, recount the moment when they first met as young adults on a train in Austria and thereafter the ongoing details of their domestic life are recounted while they constantly walk (and sit) in various locations - in ruins, in shops, on the seaside, as guests in a group lunch, at a cafe, in the car and so on. The dialogue is quite well written but unduly repetitive and endless with little other activity occurring on screen. This is a film which could have provided a greater level of depth and fails to use the talents of Hawke or Delpy to any great level. Although the film is promoted as providing an atmosphere between the two leads as 'fresh and new' in reality, the title of the film could have been better set as 'After Midnight' so the audience could be forgiven for being asleep.