Before Midnight – Once you're Happy

In the end of a class the little Joana asks to her teacher: "I’d like to know: once you’re happy what happens? What comes next?"

Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart, 1998

Whenever I see those "easy" happy endings I ask myself what comes next. And the Joana's question can be considered the summary of this movie: what happens after a happy ending. In some sense, several romantic movies create a mythology of quick and highly intense love, able to fulfill every space and solve any difference, simplifying the real long term challenges that will appear in the long road.

When the director faced the challenge of telling what comes next in Before Midnight, he decided to follow the same and successful approach of the previous chapter: make the movie nine years after the last one, both in the movie and in the real world. This technique enables not only to have truly older characters, but also to exploit their maturity, life experience and world view.

This movie shows us the real beauty of love, challenging the long road of the life; the friction and wear in the relations; the balance between our expectations and egoism against our generosity and impulse to share the experience of life. There is no final answer, no absolute right position and this leads to the question of acceptance or resignation, as well placed by Tim Lott.

How love fights in the shades of human poverty is the beauty of this movie. This is much greater than bursts of intense passion in paradise moments. This perception deeply touches me and makes me to believe that there is something in love that transcends the human condition.