Girls on Film: Why Before Midnight is a failure

The Oscar-nominated script for the third entry in Richard Linklater's acclaimed series totally whiffs on what made the first two films so special

Before Midnight — which will compete for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar this Sunday — has been awash in near universal praise, with critics and fans alike delighting in Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke's exploration of commitment, turmoil, and the struggle to remain happy through the challenges of everyday life.

After meeting on a train and spending a night together in Vienna (Before Sunrise), only to be separated until they met again, many years later, in Paris (Before Sunset), Jesse and Celine are now a couple. They have children, they struggle with the challenges of life, work, and family, and they still banter with the ease that made them fall in love so quickly almost 20 years earlier. But there are cracks in their happiness, which explode when they are finally alone with each other in a hotel, their unhappiness no longer masked by the distractions of children and life. They fight. They almost tear their relationship completely apart — until they stop, sit, and remember the romantic fantasy that brought them together, content with forgetting the anger and remembering the romance.

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Monika Bartyzel

Monika Bartyzel is a freelance writer and creator of Girls on Film, a weekly look at femme-centric film news and concerns, now appearing at TheWeek.com. Her work has been published on sites including The Atlantic, Movies.com, Moviefone, Collider, and the now-defunct Cinematical, where she was a lead writer and assignment editor.