At the 2013 SXSW Film Festival and Conference, Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight was one of the Headliner picks. A Houston, TX native, Linklater has been a fixture in the Austin community ever since he showcased the town in his 1991 debut Slacker. From there he directed such gems as Dazed and Confused, a film that Quentin Tarantino honored at the recent Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards calling it his favorite film of the ’90s, as well as A Scanner Darkly and Bernie.
But his greatest contribution to cinema may be a series of films that wasn’t originally intended to be a series. With the release of Before Sunrise in 1995, audiences saw that you didn’t need cliches when telling a romantic story – just two good lead actors (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) and some great dialogue. Nine years later saw Before Sunset, a continuation of Before Sunrise, set nine years later involving the same pair of actors. The film would go on to be critically lauded and pick up an Oscar nomination for its adapted screenplay written by Linklater, Hawke and Delpy.
Now we arrive at Before Midnight, which is set nine years after the events of Before Sunset. I’ll need to revisit the other two in the near future but as it stands now it is my favorite of the three. When it played to a packed house in Austin the crowd was more than enthusiastic. And of the 35 films I saw at the festival, it was my best of the fest.
Set to arrive May 24, 2013, Sony Pictures Classics has debuted the theatrical trailer over at Yahoo! Movies. Watch and enjoy.
In Before Midnight, we meet Celine and Jesse nine years into their marriage. Almost two decades have passed since that first meeting on a train bound for Vienna, and we now find them in their early 40’s in Greece. Before the clock strikes midnight, we will again become part of their story.
