Before Midnight [Includes Digital Copy] [Blu-ray]

Director: Richard Linklater Richard Linklater

Overview

Nine years after Before Sunset, their highly-regarded sequel to Before Sunrise, director Richard Linklater reteams with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for Before Midnight, which finds their characters together raising twin daughters. Jesse (Hawke) attempts to maintain a relationship with Hank, his teenage son from his first marriage, but their bond is strained even though Hank has just spent the summer with his dad and step-family. Meanwhile, Celine (Delpy) must make a difficult decision about her career. As with Before Sunset, Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy share credit for the screenplay. Before Midnight screened at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival as well as the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.

Product Details

Release Date:	10/22/2013
UPC:	0043396425538
Original Release:	2013
Rating:	R
Source:	SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMT
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Language:	English
Time:	1:49:00
Sales rank:	35,569

Special Features

Commentary with Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater; Revisiting Jesse & Céline; Q&A with Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy And Richard Linklater

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Ethan Hawke	Jesse
Julie Delpy	Celine
Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick	Hank
Jennifer Prior	Ella,Nina
Athina Rachel Tsangari	Ariadni
Walter Lassally	Patrick
Xenia Kalogeropoulou	Natalia
Ariane Labed	Anna
Yiannis Papadopoulos	Achilleas
Panos Koronis	Stefanos
Enrico Focardi	Child
Manolis Goussias	Child
Anouk Servera	Child
Yota Argyropoulou	Hotel Clerk
Serafeim Radis	Hotel Clerk
Graham Reynolds	Composer

Technical Credits

Richard Linklater

Ethan Hawke

Julie Delpy

Christos Voudouris

Richard Linklater	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Ethan Hawke	Screenwriter
Julie Delpy	Screenwriter
Sara Woodhatch	Producer
Christos V. Konstantakopoulos	Producer
Kostas Kefalas	Producer
Jacob Pechenik	Executive Producer
Martin Shafer	Executive Producer
John Sloss	Executive Producer
Liz Glotzer	Executive Producer
Judy Henderson	Casting
Christina Akzoti	Casting
Alex Kelly	Casting
Lucy Bevan	Casting
Christos Voudouris	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

With Before Midnight, Richard Linklater's continuation of the film series started in 1995 with Before Sunrise and deepened with 2004's Before Sunset, the Austin-based auteur has crafted a worthy addition to arguably the most artistically ambitious ongoing cinematic story of the last 20 years. Picking up nine years after we left main characters Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke), Before Midnight doesn't attempt to rehash what has come before. Linklater and his leads (who co-wrote this film together, as well as the last one) instead tackle head-on the capital-R Romanticism that made the first two installments enduring classics. Midnight isn't about falling in love or getting a second chance at correcting a mistake -- it's about how the day-to-day quotidian reality of life and relationships makes it difficult for people to hold onto their romantic feelings. The title is as much an allusion to Cinderella as it is to the previous two films. The screenwriting trio fill the movie with long, discursive conversations (there are only two scenes in the first 20 minutes) that feel utterly improvised when they are performed, but are far too deftly structured to be anything other than the work of consummate artists. All of the talk and personal issues -- which include Jesse feeling like a bad father to the teen son he had with his ex-wife and Celine's indecision about a lucrative new job offer -- lead to an epic final act in which the two of them have an alternately blistering, hilarious, and heartbreaking exchange about their relationship. During the course of this last third of the movie, you begin to appreciate how subtly the screenplay has set the table for this remarkably personal conversation, and how long both the audience and the actors have lived with these two people. Celine and Jesse have become as beloved and familiar as favorite characters from TV shows that run for a decade, but they've done so with less than six hours of screen time stretched out over 18 years. As well as we know them, Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke know them even better, allowing the filmmakers to play with Jesse and Celine's casual cruelty, their annoying neuroses, and their erotic frankness in ways that are fresh and still totally right for this couple. The movie paints in no uncertain terms how people in their forties wrestle with regrets -- you realize you can't start over, while simultaneously understanding exactly what you've lost by making the life choices you have. The film's conclusion is probably more open-ended than it may appear, leaving fans with the welcome suspicion that in another nine years, we'll see how the pair are dealing with being 50.