Before Midnight

It’s been nearly two decades since Ethan Hawke and Julia Delpy embarked on their first meet-cute-as-graduate-thesis, and Richard Linklater’s third Before... film still finds them walking (and occasionally driving) and talking about the nature of love, like the most romantic thing Aaron Sorkin never wrote. Why, it’s almost as though love is a concept that continues to vex most of humanity, even the very attractive! Anyway, those who’ve similarly fallen in confusing, yet undeniably passionate love with Celine and Jesse over the years might actually want to skip this preview, and maybe not even look at the freeze-framed image in the video above that we can’t do anything about, whoops, because it’s a very gentle spoiler about where their relationship is these days.

But if you can overlook that and press play, you’ll find that, while some things have changed, the couple remain as charmingly, delightfully elusive yet drawn to each other as ever. And besides, even if we know they’re together—as it goes for all of us—does anyone even know what “being together” truly means? Let’s do a walk-and-talk about it.