I met up with my old celluloid friends Jesse and Celine and I’m happy to announce that 18 years on, filmdom’s most enduring couple are still as fascinating as ever. Maybe even more . I was a mere 16 years old when director Richard Linklater first introduced me to Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delpy’s Celine as they met-cute on a train in Vienna in 1995’s Before Sunrise. I fell in love with them as they fell in love with each other, walking and talking their way through scenery, ideals, hopes and dreams. Nine years later, they returned in 2004's Before Sunset, with Hawke and Delpy not only reprising their roles but also co-writing the Oscar nominated screenplay with Linklater. That movie’s fade-out ending was ambiguously perfect and befitting, but now, nine more years later, we finally get to find out how things panned out between our favourite on-screen couple-together in their 40s, parents of twin girls and vacationing in Greece. Perfect Hollywood ending to movieland’s most unlikely but incredibly captivating trilogy? Not quite. And that’s exactly what makes Before Midnight possibly the best and most beautifully crafted pieces of cinema I’ve watched all year thus far. So powerfully raw, authentic and emotional are those long, sometimes trying, conversations and scenes between Jesse and Celine,that it’s like unveiling the curtain into what real life and real relationships are. And as we watch them flirt, desire, whine, yearn and provoke each other into an epic hotel room argument that’s so note-perfectly acted out, we feel almost ashamed to be completely riveted by a conversation that we’ve been eavesdropping on. As if we’ve just invaded our best friends’ most private and personal space. Hawke and Delpy take on Jesse and Celine like a disarmingly honest second skin, completely immersed, vulnerable and trusting under the intimate handling of Linklater, and thus have become that couple we might know in real life. Or even the couple we ourselves have become. Before Midnight is uncomfortable because we know that “happily ever after” actually comes with an “after”; that both parties are right and both parties are wrong; that it actually takes work after the perfect Hollywood romance movie’s end credits roll. This is the one of the most realistic love stories you’ve seen in a long time, and thus you’re that much more beguiled. With some of most absorbing on-screen dialogue in recent memory, speaking words that cut way too close to the bone, the Linklater-Hawke-Delpy trio’s screenplay definitely deserves another shot at the Oscar. Thanks Jesse and Celine, for reminding us that great film really can reflect real life. Here’s to the next 9 years and see you in 2022! (M18,109 min)