Before Midnight

oh how i wished the romantic fantasy of *before sunrise & before sunset could have continued with this film, but i think this route of showing jesse & celine as a more mature, disillusioned couple whose idealization of the past has now waned was the correct way to go. & funnily enough, even with how brutal & soul-shattering it was to see the two of them fight; how now, eighteen years after that night in vienna, they understand each other so well as to pinpoint their attacks exactly where most lethal - despite it all, before midnight to me has the most romantic ending of the trilogy. it's far from conclusive enough to know for certain the fate of our couple and if this last touching moment in the southern peloponnese is nothing but that: a moment, but the optimist in me sees the ending as the night that will ultimately be the rebirth of their relationship, rather than the dying embers of what once was. & maybe someday we'll get another film to answer that question - not so much an additional installment to the before trilogy, but a new after* series. (well, a man can dream, at least) also maybe an underrated part of the film is the dinner scene when the group starts talking about the future & jesse brings up how we're all "ceding our humanity to technology at the same moment that computers are becoming more sentient." i didn't even particularly like this part - like, was it even necessary in a film about the realities of romance & love? maybe not, but i mean for 2013 they absolutely nailed it. 8/52