BEFORE MIDNIGHT (2013)

Rated: R

Stars: Ethan Hawke,  Julie Delpy,  Seamus David-Fitzpatrick

Director: Richard Linklater

Genre: Drama/Arthouse


In Before Sunrise and Before Sunset,  Jesse and  Celine  (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy)  were falling in love.  In the third leg of the trilogy, Before Midnight, we find them as a  middle-aged couple with two young daughters. Jesse has a teenaged son who lives with his estranged wife back in the states.  

The film opens with Jesse and his boy, Hank, (Seamus David-Fitzpatrick) at the airport. Hank is returning to Chicago after spending some time on dad's turf in Europe. The father -son connection will figure prominently into the plot, as it's ripple effect will cause some tension between Jesse and Celine. Jesse wants them to consider moving to the states so he can be a real part of his son's life. Celine feels that's too radical of a shift. 

So we are there in the car with Jesse, Celine, and their adorable daughters, who are zonked out in the back seat. The two adults talk about all manner of mundane subjects. They talk. And they talk. And they talk. And while this extended scene is playing out, I'm beginning to wonder if I might soon be joining the little ones in la la land. 

And then I catch on.

Before Midnight is to be a movie in the mold of My Dinner With Andre, where the entire film is one long conversation around the dinner table. Here we thankfully get a few changes of scene along the way, but the similarity between the two films can't be ignored. We are the third wheel--the fly upon the wall--along for the ride to witness all the intimacy of this couple's life together, which ranges from an extended dinner table conversation with extended family, (everything about this film is extended) to some real intimacy in the bedroom where the sparks begin to fly. 

And it's all freaking BRILLIANT!

I gotta figure that much of the dialogue is off the cuff, because who is going to be able to deliver rehearsed lines in one continuous take that runs for a half an hour or so, without messing up?  Can you imagine the director, Richard Linklater, yelling "CUT"  twenty minutes into the scene, and they have to go back and take it from the top like, a hundred times? 

The brilliance of Before Midnight is that it is so fascinatingly real. In these tour-de-force performances from Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, there is more than just acting going on here. These two have immersed themselves into their characters to a degree that is rarely seen these days. Life, death, love, loathing, conflict, philosophy--it's all there. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the extended toplessness of  Delpy in the bedroom scene. That really topped it off for me.   

Grade: A

JILL'S TAKE

Finally: a film that backs up the boxing kangaroo image.... I couldn't disagree more with Tim's praise-worthy review of this endless talkathon. I haven't seen the other two films in this tired trilogy but BEFORE MIDNIGHT has the power to make any "hopeless romantic" give up Valentine's Day. Clearly the two actors had a hand—a heavy one—in the improvised script for which they both get a credit at the end. We all know that women can drive you crazy with their incessant, unforgiving, beating-a-dead-horse repetitions of what pisses them off. And we also know that a man's best (and sometimes only) defense is deflecting the situation with humor. Yes, French-American actress Julie Delpy has a nice set of knockers. And yes, Ethan Hawke (ex hubby of Uma Thurman) uses his boyish smile effectively. But do I really need to sit through one hour and forty-eight minutes of this self-indulgence? For me, nice tits and a nice smile aren't nearly enough.

If I had to say something positive about this film? The scenery is spectacular. And I suppose I'd have to compliment director Richard Linklater for the relaxed and realistic way he shot that last supper scene which was, for me, the only redeeming five minutes in the entire film. In this instance, Tim and I saw BEFORE MIDNIGHT separately (him in Tucson, me in La Jolla). Had we seen it together, we'd probably still be in the empty movie theater arguing about our very divided reactions!

Grade: D

  

ON THE ROAD (2012)

Rated: R

Stars: Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, Steve Buscemi, Tom Sturridge

Director: Walter Salles

Genre: Drama/Arthouse


The first thing I want to see at the beginning of a period movie is that the sets and the hairstyles and clothing of the actors is reflective of that era. In other words, to feel that I am authentically THERE. Otherwise, it's pretty stupid to ask you to believe you are watching a scene from the late forties, for example, when all the primary characters have contemporary looking hair styles. It's like they time traveled BACK to that era as their current selves, rather than being the authentic folks FROM that era. Some may think that's a relatively minor point, but I don't. And that's the first thing that irks me about On The Road, the film adaptation of beat poet Jack Kerouac's novel of "high" adventure in late forties and early fifties America.

I read the novel some time back, but if you are unfamiliar with it, you'll need to keep in mind that in the book--as it is in the film--that Kerouac has thinly disguised himself as a character called Sal Paradise, (Sam Riley) and his close friend Neal Cassady,(Garrett Hedlund) as Dean Moriarty. The third primary character is Cassady's free-spirited wife, Marylou (Kristen Stewart). 

Okay, here it comes again...they didn't even try...they didn't even TRY to do anything with Stewart's straightish, beyond shoulder-length hair that looks the same in the movie as it looks in any current publicity shot of her. That's the end of my rant, except that I've posted a picture of what women's hairstyles really looked like in the forties at the head of this review. 

So now they're all off to look for America in a drugged-up haze of weed fumes, Benzedrine and bongo drums. On The Road the movie is, like the book, a rambling recounting of aimless bohemian youth in all its hedonistic glory. It's evident that everyone involved in this production is trying real hard to bring off the unbringable and recreate the spontaneous, frenetic feel of the book, and to an extent they succeed. 

Kristen Stewart, whom up until now has been associated with a variety of vacuous vampire flicks, loses her adolescent image-- along with her duds--as a seductive predecessor to the free love movement of the sixties with a couple of steamy, revealing scenes,including a menage a trois with Paradise and Moriarty. 

Heglund is well cast as Moriarty/Cassady, but Sam Riley as Paradise/Kerouac just felt WRONG! Jack Kerouac had a kind of Boston "blue collar-ness" to him, and a bit of an edge to his personality that Riley--who comes off as slightly effeminate in the role--simply did not bring.

A bevy of household names are here in either small roles or cameos, including Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, and Steve Buscemi. Seems they all wanted to be a part of something legendary. The book is legendary, the movie is not, but On The Road--your quintessential arthouse film-- becomes more fascinating as it snakes and weaves recklessly along its way to a sobering conclusion. 

Grade:  C +

FROM THE DISTAFF SIDE--Jill's Take!

[In case Tim doesn't include this in his introduction, I'm his bona fide movie buddy. We see everything together—and agree on nothing. That's what prompted the idea of me adding my two cents in writing rather than bending his ear in the parking lot.]

I'm usually very quick to have opinions, and strong ones. But ON THE ROAD left me wondering how I felt about it. Hairstyles be damned, it was long and disjointed. And I should have hated it. Only I didn't. And the embarrassing thing is, I can't really tell you why. Except that the film created a kind of innocence of the era. No cell phones, no seat belts. There's a scene—it won't ruin the movie for you—where Sal Paradise/Sam Riley goes into a mom-and-pop store to steal some food and the clerk says he'll be right back, heading for the supply room. Would that happen today? No way. The clerk would probably have a gun hidden below the cash register. I much preferred the road scenes to the endless pot-smoking orgies. Yes, the film meandered. And yes, the main character was nobody I'd ever empathize with. But for once in our joint movie history, I'd rate this flick higher than my male cohort. If for no other reason than to watch all those megastars—especially Steve Buscemi as a smarmy closet gay, and naked-from-the-rear Viggo Mortensen—making quickie appearances.

Grade: B