Linklater's film romance returns with 'delightful' Before Midnight

What you need to knowRichard Linklater's romantic drama Before Midnight opens in UK cinemas today. The sequel to writer-director Linklater's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset was also co-written with its stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.

Set nine years after Before Sunset, the story focuses on Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy) who have moved on from unrequited love to being a couple with twin girls. On holiday in Greece, they must now face the consequences of their life choices - ex-partners, estranged children, jealousy and career crises.

What the critics like Richard Linklater's latest film is not a Woody Allen-style travelogue, but "a battle of the sexes as blistering as the best of Tracy/Hepburn", says Tim Robey in the Daily Telegraph. Hawke and Delpy have never found co-stars to bounce off more nimbly or to bring out richer nuances in their acting – five stars.

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"This perfectly played, gently incisive film is a welcome new chapter in one of cinema's most beguiling ongoing romances," says Guy Lodge in Empire. Delightful and insightful, it's the most fitting follow-up we could have asked for.

Hawke and Delpy have "such chemistry bubbling between them", says Peter Hoskin in The Spectator. And while this film looks nice and easy, the craftsmanship is exquisite.

What they don't like As ever, the energy and sense of spontaneity in the Before series is enlivening, but there's a slight air of phoniness in the way that all of the couple's issues are aired on one afternoon, says Dave Calhoun in Time Out. Hawke and Delpy remain as charming as ever, but after nine years together, a more muted study in settled silence might have been more interesting.