Edinburgh #1: Who Are You Supposed To Be?

Meet Jennifer Lusk. She’s the producer and star of “Who Are You Supposed To Be?” – the show we’re taking to the Edinburgh Fringe in August. 14^th to 26^th. Tickets on sale now. Subtle.

“Who Are You Supposed To Be?” is a rom com for geeks and a valentine to nerd culture. It’s the classic tale of a boy in a TARDIS t-shirt standing in front of a girl dressed as the Fifth Doctor, asking her to love him... and a girl wanting to know why she can’t be the Doctor and Han Solo and Captain Reynolds. They’d star-crossed lovers – if the stars were Wars and Trek – but they have so much in common, it would be a pity if these two geeks couldn’t find a time and space to fall in love. But underneath the witty repartee and awkward flirting, this is a story about wanting to feel safe, wanting to be appreciated for who we are... and how far we’ll go to find people like us.

*

Jen and I first met in a pretty geeky way. I’d gotten tickets to an advanced screening of “Serenity” – Joss Whedon’s first feature film and follow-up to his cult hit TV show, “Firefly”. This was a rough cut of the film, with temp music tracks included – but it was still the whole film, from single-shot opening scene to, well, as Captain Reynolds explained, “I aim to misbehave”. Which I think might have been Whedon’s mantra for the film.

While we were gathering to exchange money for tickets, a young woman approached the group. She was new to Melbourne. She barely knew anyone. But she did know she wanted to see the film. To desperately see the film, as did we all. She asked if we had a spare ticket. No luck. She asked others if they had a spare ticket. Nothing.

That was Jen. And I admired the fact she even tried this – that she even showed up to the cinema and asked. If I’d missed out, I would have been at home stewing about missing out. Jen showed up, asked the question – and eventually the publicist presenting the film found Jen a seat, and everyone was happy.

I don’t know if I caught her name that night, but I did find her online discussing her amazing luck at getting into the screening – and I followed her on social media for several years until we finally met at a Short & Sweet festival a few years back. Well, I was shy and chickened out one night – but eventually introduced myself and we kept in better contact ever since.

*

Jen’s in London now. She took a show to Edinburgh Fringe last year – and I was lucky enough to see a work-in-progress performance of that show before she disappeared overseas. She saw a couple of my short plays a few months earlier – same venue; The Owl and the Pussycat brings people together like that.

We’d talked about working together before she left. If she hadn’t left, I’m sure we would have worked together already. But, of course, now we are working together – and she’s taking “Who Are You Supposed To Be?” to Edinburgh. And I shall watch its success from afar.

We’ve still got some work to do. I’m having a reading very soon, so I’m able to hear how it sounds – and how an audience reacts. Jen, across the other side of the world, will do the same. We have another actor to find for our two-hander. And then we need to think about publicity and costumes and... well, everything that goes into making a show. We should be thinking about it all now, since – as I said earlier – tickets are on sale now. Sledgehammer.

*

“Who Are You Supposed To Be?” will pop up in Melbourne and Adelaide in the next couple of years – and we’re thinking about other places it might play after its world premiere season at the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s a fun little show – funny and heartwarming is the plan.

I’ll have more to say as the process continues. I’m very excited to have a show premiering on the other side of the world. In three months. From today. Wow.

Goddess: there’s one in a cinema near you

Elspeth Dickins (Laura Michelle Kelly) is a singer-songwriter who is raising out-of-control twins, while her husband is off in the Southern Ocean tracking whale migration and recording whale song. She has deferred her dream of being a singer, while her husband pursues his environmental passion – but while he’s away, she’s given the opportunity to follow her dreams.

Goddess is an original Australian film musical, which has been poorly promoted – the poster and tagline are generic and the trailer cuts together the least-interesting bits with the lowest-common-denominator jokes. Had I seen the trailer before I saw the film, I probably wouldn’t have seen the film.

With the continuing production of musicals for both big and small screens in America, the fact that the trailer shies away from promoting the fact the film is a musical puzzles me. The most inventive parts of the film are the songs and the choreography. The songs are smart, insightful and clever. Funny when they need to be and emotional when the story calls for it.

Director Mark Lamprell does an excellent job keeping the tone light throughout, though there is a lot of drama in what Elspeth is going to do when fame (and possibly fortune) are dropped in her lap. I find the tension over how she balances the different facets of her personality really compelling, while being bouyed along by the jouyous nature of the songs and the dance numbers.

Make no mistake – this is a proper musical. Sure, it’s based on a cabaret show, so it’s essentially a one-woman musical, embellished for the big screen – a couple of songs being devised for her nemesis (Magda Szubanski), a flirtatious Sydney busker (Dustin Clare), and her husband (Ronan Keating). But the songs tell us the story as much as the dialogue between characters or from the “Greek chorus” of the – at first disapproving – mothers’ group.

Now, after some Googling, I knew Laura Michelle Kelly’s musical experience (both West End and Broadway, the film version of Sweeney Todd) – and the bona fides of Ronan Keating and Magda Szubanski. But it was credits for Tamsin Carroll and Lucy Durack – well known local musical theatre supporters – that piqued my curiosity about the film. Note, though: while they both have great parts in the film, they don’t get to sing. I’d say it was a missed opportunity, but the film is so great, getting them to sing as well might have over-egged the pudding.

The film has a lot to say about the roles of women inside and outside the family home, as well as about supporting people’s creative talents, plus  a subplot that seems to satirise marketing at women – the titular Goddess laptop, “for every part of a woman’s life”. Which is about on par with the tagline for the film itself, “There’s one in all of us”.

I don’t see enough Australian films as it is. It’s remarkable to me that a film that trades so heavily on theatrical and musical conventions might have bypassed me, if not for a friend mentioning that Carroll and Durack had small parts in the film. And it stuns me that this film isn’t being pitched directly at the local musical theatre-going crowd. Because it’s perfect for them.

Goddess is a smart, passionate, delightful and often funny film about balancing dreams with real life; about finding our voices, when they are threatened to be drowned out by the ambition of others and screaming children. The songs are amazing, the performances are top-notch and the whole film is just a hell of a lot of fun.

Note: I was going to link to the trailer, but I decided against it. Just see the film - it's far better than the trailer suggests.

On reading and reviews...

Photo by Fiona Bulle

Reading.

Last night, the Cold Readings Series (CRS) hosted a reading of my new full-length play, “A Modern Superwoman”. CRS usually focuses on film scripts and mostly reads extracts. This is only the second time they’ve read a full-length script; the first was the screenplay for “41”, which was released as a feature film last year.

“Superwoman” is in its fourth draft at the moment. I’ve been developing it for a while now, but most the script was written in the last twelve months. Some of the scenes that were read last night, were only written last week. After the third draft, I got some feedback that suggested the play was underwritten – that connections between the characters were vague and their relationships suffered because of that.

In this latest draft, I’ve tried to making everything a little more explicit – without spelling everything out. And at this stage, it’s been very helpful to just lay everything out clearly. I can always pare it back later. The reading was helpful to hear what was working and whether bits were overwritten and how strong the connections between the characters are at this stage.

What’s also great about the CRS, is the post-reading discussion. The actors give their feedback to the writer. The audience gives their feedback to the writer. And the writer tries to stand there not looking too defensive or like a deer in headlights. I found the discussion very helpful, given the play’s subject matter and the tricky balance I have with a couple of the character’s stories.

The post-official discussion discussion is much more relaxing, but also helpful – even just as an ego boost. I find at that point, people are happy to discuss what they really liked about the play, rather than in the discussion when they feel like they want to highlight the flaws first up. In all ways, this is still helpful. There’s no point being there if you’re just after praise. The point of the reading is to make the play better and having heard the play and the discussion, it definitely will.

Thanks to Fiona Bulle and Serenity DeAngeles at CRS and to everyone who came along to read and talk after.

Reviews.

I don’t consider myself a theatre critic or reviewer. My blog is about the theatre I make and the theatre I see. I don’t write about every show I see. When I do write about the shows I see, I don’t necessarily consider them reviews. The three-in-one post I made yesterday about three shows I saw in the last week is a good example of this. While there are comments about all three productions, I guess the compare-and-contrast style won’t be that helpful to people who haven’t seen the other shows or who have no interest in seeing them.

I see shows to continue to further my theatrical education, as well as to support other independent theatre-makers in Melbourne. Most times, I pay to see shows. Sometimes, I’ll get a comp from a friend. Sometimes, I’ll be invited to a show because of the blog.

Whatever I post on here will be honest, whatever my circumstance – whether it’s a mainstage production or if it’s a show I’ve seen just because there’s an actor in it that I know. Because I’m not a critic, I pick and choose which shows I write about at a whim. This most recent “review” post came about because the hook of seeing three shows in a week about couples. After seeing “Constellations”, I could have written a thousand words on it alone, but I’m not a critic. I don’t feel the need to write about every show I see – even a show I loved as much as that.

But in an exercise to compare three somewhat similar - though on a very basic level - plays, I was moved to write a little something about them all. Because of that, I only touched on certain elements of each production – and didn’t try to cover them in as much detail as I would if I’d written indivdual reviews for each.

This blog is primarily about my theatre-making and my theatre watching. It is not a theatre review blog. If you want me to review your show, I make no promises. I never want to feel obligated to write a review. I mostly write about shows I loved, but if I didn’t review your show, it might not be that I didn’t love it, it might be that I didn’t have time or I just couldn’t find the hook for me to write about it.

Sometimes it’s tricky as a theatre-maker in a community that feels so small to be honest when writing reviews, especially when they are made by people I am friends with. So, the only promise I make is that when I blog about shows, I’ll tell you what I really thought. 

Relationship drama: "Constellations", "Danny..." and "The Shape of Things"

Melbourne Theatre Company's
production of "Constellations"
by Nick Payne

There’s always something potent about a two-hander about people meeting. We can all empathise with the simple, often relatively benign moment, when we first meet someone. When we first introduce ourselves. When we first start a conversation just to see what happens. It’s a dramatic cliche that instead of having someone come through a door, have them come through a window. But how we meet peopple isn’t always dramatic, but in many ways there is always the potential for dramatic tension.

I’ve seen three plays this week about two people meeting and how their relationships develop over years, one night and several months. The Melbourne Theatre Company is currently staging “Constellations” by Nick Payne. Bridget Balodis’ production of John Patrick Shanley’s “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” is on at Rancho Notorious, above 1000 Pound Bend. And RoundSquare’s first show is a production of “The Shape of Things” by Neil LaBute, at the No Vacancy Gallery at QV.

While only “Constellations” and “Danny” are actually two-handers, “The Shape of Things” turns on the relationship of one couple – Adam and Evelyn, ably supported by the compare-and-contrast relationship of Phillip and Jenny.

In “Constellations”, Marianne and Roland meet. And meet. And meet. And meet. And we see many derivations of their relationship, seeing how their lives together (and sometimes not together) would differ based on the choices they make along the way. Marianne is a theoretical physicist and she explains the “many worlds” theory of the universe, to make just a little bit of sense out of the non-conventional structure of the play.

But the key to the play is the sweetness and the lightness of touch. We may be all at sea to how all these various threads connect, but in each encounter, we empathise with these two characters. Meetings can be easy, they can be awkward, they can be rich and funny or dull and forgettable. And some of these meetings can lead to friendships or relationships or to nothing... but you never know which will lead to what. And so on. And so forth.

Letitia Caceres keeps the show tight but allows the actors to really strut their stuff. We are engaged by Alison Bell’s lovable awkwardness in many of the iterations of Marianne, just as we are drawn to the sometimes lost and sometimes strong Roland, played with marvellous dexterity by Leon Ford.

The characters at the centre of “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” are much tougher – in appearance, in temperament and physically, violently stronger. But as much as Roland and Marianne must choose the right things to say to each other in the many worlds they encounter each other, Danny and Roberta need to find the right words to even talk to each other.

Danny is a violent thug; he might even be homicidal. Roberta is a single mother, living with her parents, having trouble coping with everything life has thrown at her. And these two meet in a bar, but worlds away from the “meet cute” of “Constellations” or a million Hollywood romantic comedies. The relationship between Danny and Roberta is brutal – in physicality and language.

But they aren’t difficult to empathise with. First meetings can be fraught, even when we go in with eyes open. When the two people are as bruised and broken as these two, there’s a dramatic tension from the opening moments. Bridget Balodis’ production is tight and moody; the Rancho Notorious space is perfect for the seedy bar where this couple meets and the cramped bedroom they find themselves in later. Olivia Monticciolo and James O’Connell are strongest in the middle portion of the three-scene, sixty-minute play – but that’s where Shanley’s writing is strongest, too. When the two characters are letting their walls down, after their pants have come down, we get to see their vulnerabilities – which is often a dramatic key for getting characters together, but in this instance it begins as a catalyst to tear them apart.

Where Danny and Roberta’s relationship is based so strongly on their physicality – the way they hold and carry themselves, the couple at the centre of “The Shape of Things” begin their verbal and intellectual sparring at minute one and the cerebral sparring continues throughout Neil LaBute’s treatise on art and how appearance and relationships might change us.

Adam and Evelyn meet in an art gallery; Adam is a guard, ostensibly there to protect the art and Emily is an artist and anarchist, there to graffiti and piece of art she believes “isn’t true”. What is and isn’t true is often the key to us meeting; putting our best foot forward, willing ourselves not to make a fool in front of these people, occasionally we’ll throw in a little white lie – to keep people interested.

They key to Adam and Evelyn’s continued interest in each other is definitely the verbal sparring; these are college-age kids in a small college town – intellectual rigour is a kind of mating ritual. In contrast, Adam’s friends Phillip and Jenny seem to still be together because it’s what’s expected – even as they express doubts in the relationship, they think they should take the relationship to the next level.

As often with LaBute’s plays, human relationships become an intellectual cat-and-mouse game. Sometimes this leads to characters who are cyphers to ideas, rather than fully-rounded emotional human beings. But the relationships in “The Shape of Things” are complicated and layered – and as we see different combinations of the two couples meeting, we begin to get a fuller understanding of who they all are and what parts they play in the drama.

I was intellectually-engaged throughout, but not emotionally engaged until the climax of the piece – with Emily Wheaton’s stunning performance, as Evelyn gives the key address of the play. And as we unlock the secrets of the play, LaBute has a lot to say about how we use art, perceive art but also how we perceive people and how we use them, too.

Peter Blackburn’s directorial debut is populated by a strong cast in a great space (this show performed in an art gallery when the key pieces of work in the current display are inspired by “The Shape of Things”), but the pacing is a little off in the first half. The scene transitions are lengthy and the structure of LaBute’s work require real pace throughout; it’s one thing to nail the scenes, but if the scene changes drag, we lose some of that dramatic tension in the experience. Luckily, the second half barrels along and the climax and final scenes between Wheaton’s Evelyn and Josh Blau’s Adam are a joy and a heartbreak to watch.

Sometimes we must choose our words, choose our actions and choose how we hold ourselves. Sometimes, if we choose all three, we're bound to make an impression.

“Constellations” plays at Fairfax until March 23.

“Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” plays at Rancho Notorious until March 16.

“The Shape of Things” plays at No Vacancy until March 24.

7pm to 7am - Melbourne's first WHITE NIGHT

To the State of Victoria, the City of Melbourne and the hundred thousand people or more who attended Melbourne’s first annual White Night Festival – thank you!

It was very heartening to see the Central Business District come alive up and down Swanston Street Walk – from the State Library to the National Gallery of Victoria. Spilling out down Flinders Street and onto the banks of the Yarra and on bridges over the Yarra – and on one pontoon on the Yarra.

A hundred thousand people plus – more than attend the AFL Grand Final at the MCG in any given year. A hundred thousand people out to experience a city open all night – to see music performed in libraries on the steps of Flinders Street train station; to be given dance lessons at Federation Square; to see buildings transformed with intricate light displays; to see inside buildings that are rarely open to the public – and never all night. Until last night.

I began the night (after a delicious meal at Seamstress) by visiting Queen’s Hall at the State Library – to see this never-opened-to-the-public piece of incredible architecture, and to engage in Pop Up Playground’s little game about “The Whisper Society”. If the White Night Festival in general was a way to see Melbourne as you’ve never seen her before, “The Whisper Society” challenged players to look at that on a micro level – to find items of significance and tell stories about their history; the more creative you are, the more fun you had.

So rather than wandering down Swanston Street only marvelling at the size of the crowds or merely enjoying the street performers, we set off on a quest to look at the small details of Melbourne – and to listen for whispers and watch for shadows. And take photographs of small objects along the way and add to the grand narrative of “The Whisper Society”, whose story ended (or began?) inside St Paul’s Cathedral with a crazy man dressed all in black.

After that, I marvelled at the light display inside St Paul’s and the changing facade of the Forum theatre. Watched a song or two at the steps of Flinders Street. Watched people dance in Federation Square and felt the rhythm move me, too. Took in the Neo-Impressionists exhibition at the NGV, then missed out on the Ghost Tours of the Arts Centre, because apparently they were all booked out prior to the night?

Stopped in at the tram bar on the steps of the Arts Centre – considered venturing inside the Spiegeltent, but chose instead to while away some of those balmy late night hours with a few drinks, some more friends and a discussion of how amazing the whole night was – and what was to come.

The water and light show on the Yarra near Birrarung Marr was spectacular, if a little far away from my vantage point at the time – Princes Bridge. The WHITE NIGHT sign’s evolution across the night from its pure white to a collage of drawings by sunrise was a sight to behold. Wandered along the edge of the Yarra to spot some keen people learning to boxercise just as the first light fell upon the city – and then gathered on Princes Bridge once again to see a brass band welcome in a new day and farewell the White Night for 2013.

Some issues for the government and city council to consider for future White Night festivals:

1. Better signage

2. More White Night ambassadors/volunteers/people giving directions

3. Remember that while free is nice, it means everyone will want to try all the free things and stuff like the ghost tours will book out before the event begins (I don’t even remember the website suggesting you needed to book for that)

4. Great that the trams ran all night, but might be good if trains ran later and started up again earlier. White Night finished at 7am and some train lines didn’t leave the city until 7:45 or 8am. In the dying hour or so of the festival, that long wait for the train was interminable

5. Something to cope with the high use of mobile phones and the White Night website and app, which got hammered all day and all night, which made it hard to navigate the city and events

6. The website itself, when it was running, wasn’t all that clear in its division of events and difficult to plan a trip through the city

But those problems aside, a beautifully balmy night, filled with music, dance, theatre, art and interactive storytelling that opened up the city and reminded us all that Melbourne is not just the sporting capital of Australia – we can also be the Arts & Culture capital, as long as our Arts Minister brings this sort of Major Event to the city, because Melbournians are happy to embrace an all night party.

Cast & Director of "Poems A Dead Boy Wrote" - Sydney 2013

Poems a Dead Boy Wrote

Short & Sweet Sydney 2013

16 to 18 February

King St Theatre, Newtown

TICKETS ON SALE

Starring Elizabeth Slatter, Amanda Jermyn (Home & Away, Heartbreak High), Lachlan Galbraith (Puberty Blues, Home & Away)

Directed by Florence Kermet

Perfect Couple(t): Before Sunrise & Before Sunset

Last night, reviews of Richard Linklater’s new film Before Midnight were published – after the film’s first screening at the Sundance film festival. And suddenly, on reading nine positive reviews and one negative, this third film in the Before Sunrise, Before Sunset series becomes my most anticipated film of the year. 

And, given this series' release schedule, perhaps my most anticipated film of the decade? If Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reunite for a fourth time, we won’t see Jesse and Celine again until 2022.

Below are reproductions of reviews I wrote of the first two films in 2004. In January 2004, I revisited Before Sunrise for the first time since knowing there was a sequel in the works – nine years after Sunrise was first released in 1995. In September 2004, I wrote two reviews of Before Sunset: the first, a single word; the second, a lengthy discussion.

Some thoughts on the upcoming Before Midnight at the end.

*

REVIEW: BEFORE SUNRISE (1995), January 2004

From my review of Lost in Translation:

I like small movie melodramas that focus on gestures and quiet times which develop slowly and thoughtfully.  

Better are ones with the sense to know that comedy is a legitimate device to lift them up out of the depths of gravitas and, sometimes, pretentiousness.

The ones directed with a sure hand and filled with flawless performances are greater still. And, thus, rare. 

Lost in Translation is all of that, perfectly executed.

Before Sunrise is Lost in Translation’s verbose younger brother. It’s untethered by marriage or commitment or grand personal drama. It’s free to quote, philosophize, wax lyrical and spin shit. But it is directed with a sure hand and does, at its centre, contain flawless performances.

Richard Linklater loves dialogue. And chance meetings. A young people. And philosophy. And relishing life and love. It comes through all his movies – Slackers, Dazed and Confused, SubUrbia, Tape, Waking Life, School of Rock. But Before Sunrise (which unfortunately acronyms to BS) is all that in concentrated form.

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy meet on a train, they chat and get to know each other and these awkward first moments are probably the least enjoyable parts of the film. I’m not sure whether it perfectly captures a real-life moment when an articulate guy meet a gorgeous woman or if Linklater and his co-screenwriter are just trying too hard.

Once the characters alight in Vienna, though, the ebb and flow works perfectly. They are both articulate and gorgeous. They are in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, one that neither of them knows very well or at all. (Maybe, like me, they recognise the Ferris Wheel the first kiss on as the one from The Third Man and The Living Daylights.)

Lost in Translation offers two characters who are lost – in Japan, in themselves and in the world at large. But the fact that Before Sunrise’s two characters impulsively jump off the train together and wander around the city all night just talking reminds us that they are young and aren’t yet under any pressure not to do this kind of thing. It makes the film a really honest look at the passion of youth.

Occasionally the characters say something that they mean to be profound but come off as silly. But this is the way these things work. They want to impress each other. They are youthful and exuberant and not everything that crosses their mind is fully-formed or even barely thought-out. While everything in Lost in Translation is considered and deliberate, Before Sunrise is off-the-cuff and surprising.

And ninety-five minutes breezes past in a way that an all-dialogue movie might not do in other hands. There are only two characters in the film who only very occasionally converse or react to other people. And yet they are complex enough – at least in what they say – that they are always interesting to listen to.

The film is almost ten years old now. I believe it first premiered in Venice in late 1994 and was released in the U.S. in 1995. Is this to suggest that thoughtful, articulate, romantic comedies are only once-in-a-decade event? Perhaps.

And yet Linklater has recently done what I had once thought unthinkable – he’s made a sequel. Set 10 years after their night in Vienna, the characters bump into each other in Paris where Ethan Hawke’s Jesse is on a publicity tour for his novel. Very advanced sneak previews lean decidedly to it being a good sequel, but perhaps not great. I shall console myself with the thought that even if this follow-up, gracefully titled If Not Now, is imperfect and not as good as the original, perhaps that too is a comment on youthful love – it’s never as perfect as you remember it. It can never quite capture the first time.

Before Sunrise is shamelessly romantic. It makes me laugh, it makes me cry.

*

REVIEW #1: BEFORE SUNSET (2004), September 2004

Perfection.

*

REVIEW #2: BEFORE SUNSET (2004), September 2004

Before Sunset is the third film in the past twelve months that really moved me – shook me on an emotional level. It is almost impossible to fathom that this film, a sequel to the superb 1994 feature Before Sunrise, eclipses both Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with its insights into love and romance.

For me, as I said in my first review, this film is perfection. The two stories we have of Jesse and Celine form a wonderful couplet – just as the characters do as well.

When I first heard that director Richard Linklater and actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy had reunited to make this sequel, I blanched. Not only do I have fond memories of Before Sunrise and an equivalent period in my life, but I think the film holds up brilliantly. This film’s working title was If Not Now – a stronger and more literate title than the more obvious Before Sunset, which seems designed purely for marketing purposes.

If Not Now intrigued me and scared me. Was Linklater reacting against his turning mainstream with School of Rock? Were he and his actor’s mining one of their most beloved works for an inferior project? The sheer romanticism and ambiguous ending of the original film practically begs that we never know what happened next…

This from someone who really only sat through Linklater’s interminable Waking Life solely for the Jesse and Celine scene – direct from Linklater’s fevered imagination and not part of their ongoing story. But perhaps a part of their own dreams?

But word of If Not Now fell upon me just as the film was being shown in Berlin – Linklater nominated for a Best Director Award. Advanced word on the film was good. I even braved a potentially spoiler-filled review at Aint-It-Cool-News to read an early report… thankfully there was one article that was adept at keeping the film’s secrets, while tantalising a fan of the original.

Critical acclaim has almost been universal. So in recent weeks, between its wide release in the United States two months ago and its arrival in Australia last week, I was becalmed. I wasn’t anxious to know if it worked as a film, if it upset the original, if it got the films wrong. All I waited to see was how I’d react to this sequel that I never dreamed I would ever see – and never really wanted to.

The actors, the director and the characters have aged nine years – and the films perfectly compliment each other. This is not just an extension of the first film, it is a re-examination of it. With two points of reference in Jesse and Celine’s life we are now able to understand these characters better – both as they are now and what they were then.

Much of the original film is filled with the enthusiasm of youth – and much of the time the two characters are trying to impress each other. Jesse is clearly concious about not living up to the cliché of the ugly American abroad and Celine tries, with less success, to circumvent the idea that all French women are neurotic and high maintenance. We forgive them their indulgences – of all kinds – because they are being as romantic as we were (when I first saw the film) or wish we had been (when I watch it now).

Before Sunset illuminates parts of the first film – not just in direct reminiscences and references, but in oblique turns of phrase and the way parts of them are very much the same now as they ever were, despite the nine years of wear and tear on their bodies and souls. This is why I refer to the films as a perfect couplet – they are two halves that exist on their own but transcend the medium when considered together.

It is difficult to talk about the film in detail without ruining the surprises along the way. For as the first film was about the anticipation of first meeting, coupled with a sense of desperation that it would soon be over, this is merely another hour in their lives – in which you must experience it as they experience it. Perhaps with Before Sunrise fresh in your mind or maybe with just the hint of recollection – see how well you remember nine years ago and match yourself with this couple and their differing memories of that night in Vienna.

Parts of this film made me immensely sad – youth and passion and romance are fleeting. The world moves on – and not just for these two characters. Jesse and Celine have found more distinct places in the world now, reacting to and against the current political and social climate of a Western World that works differently than it did nine years ago. It makes me remember the early 90s fondly, like a baby boomer remembers the 50s.

Parts of this film made me joyous – serendipity is often overused in romantic comedies and dramas to make fate seem divine. Before Sunset puts the idea in perspective – there are times when coincidence does figure in our lives, but just as often the way we act determines an outcome. Did Jesse really write his book about that night in Vienna in an attempt to find Celine?

Parts of this film I still have difficulty talking about. The real-time scenario, the perfect but realistic dialogue, the passions, beliefs and ideals of these characters were so easily identified with. Twice I took a sharp, deep breath in reaction to moments in the film – one as Jesse first sets eyes on Celine for the time in Paris and once more when I knew this brief encounter was over for maybe another nine years…

Richard Linklater has hinted that he will revisit Jesse and Celine again in the future. In essence, even the idea tempts fate. But maybe that would be right – as it is what Jesse and Celine have always done.

*

BEFORE MIDNIGHT (2013)

Just as Sunset tempted fate, trying to fashion a sequel to a film with Sunrise’s beautifully ambiguous, romantic ending, Midnight must follow a more complex and complicated conclusion. Some of the early reviews give details about where Jesse and Celine are at in their lives now, but I leave it to your discretion to find those reviews and read them. As always, the Hollywood Reporter says a bit too much. And it’s The Guardian’s review that is the sole negative voice, so far.

After Sunset, I knew a third film in this series was inevitable. What little I know about the third film makes it sound like Hawke, Delpy and Linklater have found another evening in Jesse and Celine’s lives where it’s time they take stock, talk about themselves and the world and how they fit.

It’s one thing to be excited for the new Iron Man film, a year after The Avengers. It’s another to be thrilled to return to JJ Abrams Star Trek universe after four years.

But to meet this couple again, this time in Greece, nine years after we’ve last seen them and eighteen years after they first met and we first met them, is both thrilling and scary. What if they aren’t the same as when we last saw them? What if we don’t like the people they’ve become? What if meeting them one more time is not so much a mistake, but a disappointment?

But what if, yet again, it’s perfection? And if not... can’t we forgive, after all these years, a perfect couple(t)’s little faults?

Before Midnight will be released everywhere some time this year.