Before Midnight (2013) Review

"Very few people realize what it is like for an active or passionate woman to have a child. Some friends told me, "You'll see, you'll want to throw them out the window." Okay, but the truth is I never wanted to hurt them once, but I thought about ending it all for myself a hundred times."

To fall in love is simple, to stay in love is complicated.

An interesting metric for the final third of a trilogy is how important it is to have seen the previous two entries. I think Before Midnight is good by itself, but great as the capper of a trilogy. You don't need flashback, or much exposition, because that's all been taken care of in the previous two films. You enter this movie with everything you need.

So when these two who kind of can't live with one another and kind of can't imagine parting, have their mid-life crisis it feels absolutely paid-in-coin. You know exactly what they're both regretting having lost, and you know how unrealistic it was for things to have stayed that way for very long. At the termination of a luxe vacation, a writer and an activist are side swiped with the heavy realities of even their quite comfortable lives.

Aging disappoints- these two obviously flighty dreamers, more than some others- but ultimately nobody is ready to give up.