Dir: Richard Linklater

With: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Runtime: 109 minutes

THIS third in the "Before" series starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke as lovers meeting and parting down the years is something of a gamble for director Richard Linklater and his two leads. So beloved are Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) – audiences have met, married and had children to them – that to break hearts now would be a sin indeed.

To his credit, Linklater has taken a chance with a film that delivers a bouquet with as much barbed wire as blooms. Is his audience ready for such a close-up of Celine and Jesse's relationship? In some cases one suspects not.

The story catches up with Jesse and Celine as a long holiday in Greece comes to a close. Departing from the pattern of previous films, Linklater allows other couples in on the act this time, the better to show how relationships vary and change. Among these supporting characters are a young couple in the first throes of love, as Jesse and Celine once were, and a married pair who still adore each other, emotional warts and all.

It is a meandering, sometimes suffocatingly smug curtain-up to the main act, which is Jesse and Celine gabbing about life, love, the universe and everything, but mainly love. In each film, this basic plot never seems as though it will work, yet each time it proves irresistible. By this stage in the game, the actors, who co-wrote the screenplay with Linklater, are so relaxed with each other that it is like eavesdropping on a real couple.

What we are listening to is two people who think they know each other, inside and out. What they, and we, are about to find out is if they are right. Hands must be shown in the poker game of love.

What is revealed is at turns funny, shocking and scalpel-sharp. The sparring does not quite reach Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf levels; not enough booze is drunk for that, and the weather is too darn hot for combat in cardigans. But it does take the breath away at times, with the dialogue and drama making for some uncomfortable moments as home truths come home to roost. If you go to the cinema to escape such domestic sturm und drang, you might want to try the zombies of World War Z instead.

Far less surprising than the arguing is how the two characters have developed. Perhaps we all become the cliches we set out to escape. One hoped for a few surprises on this score, though. The allure of the Before series, after all, is that it did not settle for the obvious.

Delpy and Hawke have always made a winning partnership, and they continue to be so here. Young love finally grows up in Before Midnight. Whether the clock strikes and the dream is over, you'll have to find out for yourself. Wear a hard hat.

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