It seems easy

How many love stories arrives every weekend at cinemas? How many say that it's catching, sensitive, emotional,...? How many times is true? Really few. Most of the times the small movies hidden in the hoardings are the good ones, but it's true that sometimes are like the other ones but with a low budget for advertisement and a indie touch.

Eighteen years ago, in 1995, arrived at cinemas Before Sunrise, a small story with two almost-unknown actors, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, directed by an almost-novel director, Richard Linklater. The three of them was the creators of that movie who told the encounter of Jesse and Céline in a train in Europe. He is from Chicago, she from Paris. Both live a short love story of 105 minutes (the length of the film), a night in Vienna that starts and ends there. It was a small phenomenon. The simplicity (or not) of the plot was so realistic, without any expectations or relevancy, that not only capture the attention of the spectator, their hearts too.

Nine years later, in 2004, the same team met up again, in another daytime, Before sunset, that revealed what happened with this two person, suddenly, relived a similar story, of course, nine years before, when Jesse, now a married writer, travel to Paris to present his book based on the encounter he live in 1995. They meet up again, the movie repeat the scheme. The lengh of the movie is the time they spend together in the city of love when they not only remember the day they met but their new lifes too. The phenomenon got bigger. Linkater, Delpy and Hawke captured the spirit of this fast encounters and could filled it up with love so well that the fans of this story grew up.

Seem easy that now, in 2013, another nine years later after the second film, they can do it again with Before midnight. or make the story bigger thanks to fame. But not. They don't do it. The story they told keeps being small, just a conversation.

Seems easy they can succeed repeating the formula. But not. They have a huge number of fans expecting how the story evolve and don't want to be disappointed. And not, they don't it. They don't repeat the formula at all. The length of the movie is quite short again (109 minutes), yes, but it doesn't at the same time that the story happens. And not, they don't disappoint the fans with this small change. In fact helps and it's necessary.

Now the couple is finally that, a couple. After their encounter in Paris Jesse got divorced to be with Céline. They have two kids and the movie shows their holidays in Greece after he say goodbye to the kid he have with the ex-wife. What happen then?

Seems easy to expect. They are in Greece a country that suffer a crisis. A crisis, that, of course, the couple gonna live too. But a different one. Or not so different? During their walkings around the Peloponnese they start to feel the weight of past, as they find the ruins from the country. What they lost, what they lived, what they reject to be a couple, what they missed to live like that, what they expect from the future, what they gonna do now with their lives together...

Jesse and Céline fight but Linklater doesn't remark this argues with music or dramatic scenes, nor Hawke neither Delpy. The calm of the rest of the movies it's still here. We see the fight as we saw the met up, the rencounter in Paris, as a normal thing, because this love story is still real.

The director and the actors and the characters don't lose the contact with the reality, with the current affairs (politics, the new way to have a relationship, the new way to live apart together, to be a divorced father, be married twice, are some of the subjects they discuss about it during the film), with current life.

Seems easy to do a movie that is just almost a dialogue about that. But nobody do it with the ability of Linklater who shot these two actors living their or Viaggio in Italia (where Roberto Rosselini filmed a couple in crisis meanwhile they spend their holidays in Pompaii, another city in ruins), as Céline said. The director don't add more sounds that the voices of the nature, the people, the streets and the actors, of course. They stand the camera in front of the camera to follow their steps when they are walking (as in the other films) or driving and keep doing the same during the fight. The shots keeps a certain distance, never two close to the characters, to don't pressure the actors nor the feelings of the audience, just when he wants to communicate the love lefts. Neither he moves the camera faster when the actors walk around the hotel room in an important part of the film. He just points some details: the sunset, the Byzantine church, the young couple but not without meaning... It's all natural.

Not in vain, seems easy that Delpy and Hawke look so fresh, so casual, so... like a couple living their holidays and fighting, as a normal couple, sometimes their are important, sometimes irrelevant, but that's how it is in the real life.

And here it is, the magnificence of the movie. Maybe Before midnight (as all the trilogy) seems an easy movie, as it is. It says nothing special, it's just a movie that reflects the fights of a couple with their own problems as it happens in life, with the same vocabulary, with the same humor and the same drama, the same relevance. But this is precisely what makes the movie(s) a huge and great love story of all time. It's not a documentary but it's real as one. Seems a romantic story shot by and American director, with a big studio behind, with (now) popular actors,... the same old story that arrives to cinemas every single week. But it's not. It's life. And it's not easy.

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