Before Midnight. The Press Tour.

Film Last Tuesday, amongst other things, I managed to see Before Midnight at the Cornerhouse in Manchester with a nice quiet, tittery in the right places, audience. It's a difficult film to talk about without destroying through spoilers, except to say that it is peerless, that the duration went extremely quickly and as ever it was over before I wanted it to be.

Including the Waking Life cameo, this is the fourth appearance of these characters and although cinematically, it's right that perhaps we should wait another nine years to greet them again, should Ethan, Julie and Richard be in the mood, or feel that they have something else to say, good god I wish they'd be back sooner (he says as he reaches for Julie's "Two Days in..." films as placebos).

As is customary, on the road to release, the trio have been appearing here and there. Since shifting over to unlimited broadband, I found that pretty much every topic you can think of has been covered by lengthy interviews and lectures and press conferences and Before Midnight is no exception. Here's the are being interviewed at close quarters by Anne Thompson, who's keen to tell them how it affected her personally:



Then there's the relatively famous Berlin Film Festival media conference, which is at least worth watching for the press reaction to Ethan's hair as he drifts on stage:



Finally, here the very curious Film Society of Lincoln Center summer talk, in which a slightly nervy (it seems) Film Comment contributor Phillip Lopate isn't quite sure when the three of them are joking and keeps leaping to Julie's defence (as though she needs it). This is the weirdest, actually, because it looks like a Q&A after a screening, but none of the audience have seen it yet, so they can't really talk about the film properly because of the River Song problem.



What all three illustrate is that actually, for all the ways the characters are different to their creators, the chemistry is *really* similar. Oh and the fantastically cagy look on Ethan face at the Lincoln when they're asked if he and Julie ever kissed. The romantic in me has always wonders why Julie included the Waltz song on her first solo album way before they decided to make Before Sunset (the song which ultimately appeared in the film), retelling the plot of the film and name-checking Hawke's character with a smirking pause beforehand.