**½ Before Midnight (May 2013) – Theatre

Ethan Hawk, Julie Delpy. Third in the series of movies featuring one day in the life of this couple. They are now in their early 40s and struggling with the stresses of children and ex’s.

He says: Whatever you do, don’t say I liked that movie.

She says: So, he did not like that movie. But it wasn’t because he found it boring, or badly written, or unrealistic. It wasn’t a quality problem.

It was that Céline drove him nuts.

He says: God! She was so irritating!

She says: It’s true; Céline was really irritating. See, in this installment, the couple spends an awful lot of time arguing. And I must admit that I also found myself more often taking Jesse’s side. Céline often did seem over-dramatic, stubborn, unfair… even mean.

But these are movies of talking. And she would have her moments of being to explain why she was responding as she was. The strain of having to deal with their infant twins while he was on book tour. The feeling that she had to take on more of the burden of care. And she’d kind of win me back. (And maybe someone with kids would be more on her side in the first place… I dunno.)

Overall, there’s no way for this one to be quite as enjoyable as the first two, which involved falling in love, then reconnecting. Staying together is just a more difficult theme. But it is explored effectively in this movie, if you’re brave enough to go there. And Greece does look really lovely in it…