Our Chris Corbellini, who thinks he’s a sports producer but is actually one of the most insightful film reviewers anywhere to be found, sat in a dark room for two hours recently. And THEN he attended a screening of “Before Midnight.” Enjoy.

Before Midnight

by Chris Corbellini

Here we are at last, after 18 years and three feature films of French girl Celine and American boy Jesse walking and talking across Europe, a love story not about what if, but what happened. 

Like his shirt, Jesse (Hawke) cannot decide if he’s in or he’s out.

“Before Midnight” is one of several three-quels released in May, the third movie that follows “Before Sunrise,” when the two meet cute, and “Before Sunset,” when they reconnect cuter. But comparing this third chapter to “Iron Man 3” and “Hangover Part III” is like comparing jazz man Django Reinhardt to a battery-powered, cymbal-banging monkey doll. I’m not against battery-powered, cymbal-banging monkey dolls as a cinematic experience per se, but clearly you’d forget about them after your ears stopped ringing upon exiting the theater. After clocking in at a fat-free 1 hour, 48 minutes, “Midnight” made me want more of the fat of the story. You can’t ask any more of a sequel, Part II, Part III, or of course, “The Fast and the Furious Part 6.”

So let’s catch up, because “Midnight” does it for us almost immediately. After Jesse the novelist (Ethan Hawke) says goodbye to his teenage son at an airport at the end of a summer spent in Greece, the proud papa steps out of the terminal and there she is, his Celine (Julie Delpy), now his wife, on a cell phone with two adorable twin daughters in the back seat of their SUV. If they paused and snapped a photo it’s most definitely a Facebook update – a contented, very successful family unit living the good life under sunny skies (Celine does take out an iPhone minutes later, but to not-quite-playfully film Jesse). It certainly appears as if the once-young lovers found lasting domestic bliss, and the audience murmured excitedly at a recent screening as it unspooled. But like a Facebook post the sweet life imagery may conceal what is really going on around here.

“As a matter of fact, this IS the place where they give you free chocolate chip cookies when you check in.”

The characters may have aged and weathered, but the look of the story remains uniform. The spine of these three pictures are the long conversations – shot from in front of the leads, then another take from the back – to potentially splice in different takes. Yet after revisiting the first two movies you recognize that Hawke and Delpy may have nailed many of those lengthy moments in one take, one tracking shot. And “Midnight” has the crown jewel of tracking shots, a 10-minutes-plus drive with Jesse behind the wheel of the SUV and Celine in the shotgun seat, discussing her career and their children. The journey is a long one (you can see the countryside change in the reflection of the windshield), and during the ride the cracks begin to show in the marriage. The wife snipes at her husband, and the husband gets upset when she takes a call from his son and doesn’t pass him the phone. All of this is buttressed with humor, but Celine just says it when they begin to talk about moving the entire family closer to that son by returning to the United States: “This is the start of the end of our relationship.”

The director, Richard Linklater, cuts away from them just once here, to show Greek ruins that has a funny payoff at the end of the scene. It’s an terrific acting showcase between Hawke and Delpy, who continue to grow up and grow old in these roles together.

Act 2 is spent at a dinner table of a elderly writer who lent them a villa on that Greek shore, and the lively discussion inevitably veers into the differences between the sexes. There have been several Linklater movies where I felt the conversations seemed so casual they must have been improvised. Spike Lee, for example, will do this. All of the Mumblecore movies do this. But no, the discussions here were meticulously crafted by the director and the two leads. They give an older dinner guest the final word, and she explains what it means to lose your life partner, and while all that sex and sniping seems so important to these couples seated near her, we are all just “passing through” before the end.

Indeed, Jesse and Celine should be happier. They have kids who belong in Toys R Us commercial, and pick vegetables out of a garden that looks like it belongs to Vito Corleone. The view over their shoulders belong in a Greek tourism ad (lensed lovingly on coastline in Messinia and Kardamili). So where’s the love? Where’s the compassion, for that matter? It’s nowhere to be found in the final act in a hotel room, when Jesse finally says it for the audience: “We are in the Garden of Eden.” Finally, angrily, honestly, the reasons for the strife in their marriage are made crystal clear.  Not all of their stresses are self-inflicted. Still, the film couple could always communicate clearly to one another, and now that line of communication includes exactly what they can’t stand about each other. So much for the romantic ideal of Jesse and Celine.

I’m convinced the second movie — when they meet again at 32 and regret finally, finally gives way to possibility — is the powerhouse. That screenplay was rightly nominated for an Oscar. But the first film ends with that simple and original montage of all the spots the lovers visited the night before in the morning light. They were indeed just “passing through” and that moment in time was over. “Midnight” summons this kind of storytelling once more, albeit briefly and in the closer quarters of that hotel room. Untouched wine glasses, still full. The bed, tussled. The front door shut. A bitter group of shots, and its passage is not lost on Jesse. Celine’s eyes are like bayonets as her man tries to keep it light during a final, heartfelt attempt at reconciliation. The camera pulls away and I saw no guarantee that nine years from that moment, at 50 with children presumably more independent, that they would remain a couple. I also couldn’t say with any certainty that the relationship was doomed.

This is just like ‘Mama Mia’, except no one’s singing or having sex with Meryl Streep.

Here is a series that could have staying power, like the real-life “Up” films across the pond, which revisits a set of ordinary people every seven years. It doesn’t look like a terribly expensive production each go-around. I hope Linklater and the two leads continue their walking and talking until it finishes with just one of them, grayer and slower and perhaps 98 years young, looking out at a sunset on a Greek shore. Or at a dinner party with friends and family, getting the final line about what a so-called soul mate could be and should be, and what you sacrifice to keep that partner close.