Don’t worry Berlin: Richard Linklater´s „Before Midnight” at Berlinale – and what the German press says…

For Richard Linklater „Before Midnight” is a kind of long journey back home-story.

It has been in Berlin 1995, when he won with „Before Sunrise” his first important international trophy as a director – the „Silbernen Bären” (Silver Bear), Berlinale´s second place price. After „Before Sunset” nine years later on Linklater is now (again nine years later) presenting the sequel „Before Midnight” out of competition. After a night in Wien and an afternoon in Paris this time the French Celine (Julie Delpy) and the American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) are spending holidays in Greece. Meanwhile they have kids and have to decide about their uncertain future…

The film has some enjoyable dialogues about vital questions, but is this enough for a good movie?

The German newspapers are divided about „Before Midnight”. The „tageszeitung” likes the movie more or less as a reflection of a patchwork-couple about their relationship in the „age of post-romanticism”. In contrast the Berlin „Tagesspiegel” is more critical and sees in the film an example for the overall relatively poor and exhausting competition program this year until the halftime of the festival.

„Before Midnight” premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in January, and this is one argument more for German critics, who are lamenting (as always?) not only about the quality of this year’s competition, but also about the fact that a good part of the participating movies could have seen before elsewhere. That´s why the Berlinale is losing merit and credibility to other big European festivals, they say.

Only Harald Martenstein, one of the most famous German columnists, writes: Don´t worry Berlin, these complaints are made from provincial critics far away from the German capital (he is mentioning the important „Süddeutsche Zeitung” from Bavaria’s capital Munich): „Who wants world premieres has to go to Cannes.” For Martenstein Berlin nevertheless is still the city of cool, whereas Cannes remains a backwater town.

Ole Schulz