Finally got to see "before midnight" last night. For the uninitiated this is the third movie of the Linklater - Delpy - Hawke love triangle that started 18 years ago in Vienna, continued 9 years ago in Paris and now finds generation X's favourite couple in Greece, married with twins, exploring for the first time a different kind of love: not the "once in a lifetime" love of the first movie, not the "lucky second strike" love of the second movie, but the "love for real" that normal people, with normal love stories have to face, day in - day out.
This is the kind of love that people warn you about, the kind of love that gets you every day, with the good things and the bad things, the kind of love that makes you "wipe the pee off the toilet seat" and see your loved one naked, imperfect, boring, part of reality. They said that this movie was about the "melancholy of commitment" and I guess one couldn't have hit the nail in the head better.
What happens after the fairy tale ends, people ask, after Snow white gets the Prince and so on... With the danger of sounding terribly cliché, the answer is, life happens... Life takes over and fairy tales are put to the test. And I guess for the not-20-somethings-anymore among us, that's the question, at least this has been the one for me: how will we fare differently, us, the clever educated free self-conscious generation that does not have the constraints of our parents. How will we do? Will we all divorce? Will we manage? How will it be?
Jesse and Celine's answer is that we will manage, of course we will, but not without a small sad look in our eyes. Not without a pain in the heart, not without bruises. You manage to go through life but you really must "love [the other person] unconditionally" to put up with the pretentiousness of human existence, with the fact that people are boring, with the fact that sex can be boring, with the fact that the every day reality of family life can be boring, and really break through and keep romance alive. Not for one night in Vienna, not for one afternoon in Paris but for ever and ever, keep romance alive.
Bring it on!
