2013 · Movie
Before Midnight
The third "one day" installment in the continuing romantic saga of American Jesse and Parisienne Celine is presented. They met eighteen years ago as early twenty-somethings by chance on a Budapest to Vienna train, and spent a memorable twenty-four hours together in Vienna before parting company at the Vienna train station vowing to meet again at that exact spot in six months' time, that subsequent meeting which never happened. They reconnected nine years later, again by chance, when Jesse, then married to another woman with a son Henry a result of that union, was on a book tour in Paris. Celine happened to notice the advertisement of him speaking at her local bookstore, this his first book, "This Time", an account of their romantic day in Vienna. Another nine years later and living in Paris, they are now married to each other, and have twin adolescent daughters, Ella and Nina. Jesse's Chicago residing first wife, who has sole custody of Henry, still hates him and Celine, and they only see Henry on summer and Christmas vacations, which pains Jesse especially as he feels he needs to be a more constant presence in now fourteen year old Henry's life. They, including their three combined offspring, have spent this summer in Greece at the invitation of Patrick, a literary benefactor who only knew of Jesse previously by reputation. This day, after seeing Henry off at the airport to go home, Jesse and Celine have an al fresco dinner at Patrick's with three other couples, each at different stages of life and at different stages of their coupledom, before they head off to a hotel alone to mark the end of their Greek stay, it a gift from their Greek friends Ariadni and Stefanos. As Jesse and Celine continue their discussions of life and love, both with their friends and alone on their own, they may come to some realizations if they can overcome the pulling priorities in their lives to remain a loving, married couple.
