the groundhog day project

In an interview in Vanity Fair , the interviewer started with, “This is the most romantic film I’ve ever seen with this much fighting.” Star Julie Delpy replied, “The most romantic film about fighting!” Amusingly, a piece in Elite Daily says, “No epic love stories were written about complacency from years of living in the doldrums of lame ass bullshit.” Before Midnight , taken on its own, is not particularly romantic. But, it also is not supposed to be. The Celine and Jesse story has moved beyond romance. That does not mean that it has moved beyond love. The present (and near future) of Celine and Jesse’s relationship actually gets wrapped up in the car conversation; Celine announces that she may take a government job and this exchange happens: JESSE No, you don’t want to work for him. CELINE Why not? JESSE For the government? CELINE This is different. We need laws. That’s the only way this is gonna happen. JESSE That’s not the only way. You guys have been getting a lot of good ...

I find I can't--or don't want to--write about the third act of Before Midnight . But, who needs to get that far into everything anyway? Instead, I could talk about punctum, or a series of puncta. If you're new, or you've forgotten, a punctum, by way of Barthes, is the piercing, wounding moment that pulls you in, that forces you to identify with a character perhaps, that puts you fully into the story, the small detail that makes it all real for you in the moment. I can avoid the greater wound by dealing with the lesser. (As Jesse is left behind, Hank gone, music starts up and it feels intrusive. I'm sure there was background music in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset but I really don't remember it. If it was there, it wasn't intrusive. Here, and a few instances later in this film, the music is a bit too noticeable, making this film feel more like a movie than whatever the previous two films were.) The first punctum, I suppose, is in the car. The girls are...

The one who frowned and the lady. (And, if you get that reference, bully to you.) But, who gives a damn about closure? Every story ends in death if you keep telling it--and, if there is a fourth film in this series, rather than the phrasing-appropriate Before Noon , I hope it's called Afternoon and someone's dead. That would be the appropriate thematic end to this story... Hell, already in this driving and talking sequence, there's talk of death--Celine's Cleopatra kitty story is horrible. But, I don't really want to fabricate a fourth story. I've already written recently about how I don't like people thinking the movie needs to match up to their ideals for it. Wood (1998) would agree with me, I think. He writes--in a piece entitled "Rethinking Romantic Love: "Before Sunrise" by the way: I believe in the possibility of a "definitive" reading of a work only in the sense that is is definitive for myself at a certain stage of my e...