Over the past quarter-century, moviegoers have seen Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) meet and spend a night wandering around Vienna and falling in love in Before Sunrise (1995); reuniting nearly a decade later in Paris and still having that spark in Before Sunset (2004); and being an official couple spending the summer in Greece with their twin daughters and dealing with a relationship at a crossroads in Before Midnight (2013). While it’s long been assumed that a fourth film would be happening, with Hawke even suggesting in early 2020 that an entry that featured the couple in lockdown might be just what the world needs, it seems as if we might have seen the last of Jesse and Céline.
In a new interview with the French outlet Telerama, Delpy admitted that director Richard Linklater proposed the idea of a fourth Before film to her—and she turned it down. In fact, she’s been seriously considering leaving the film industry altogether… possibly to become a doctor? Here’s what she had to say:
“I often think about [leaving the industry]. A year and a half ago, I was not far from it. The hell I went through to produce my film had exhausted me. I said no to Richard Linklater for the fourth part of the Before films. I thought that maybe I could go back to school. I would make a very good doctor, for example! You give me three symptoms and I tell you what you are suffering from!”
(Someone should introduce Julie to WebMD.)
To be fair, Delpy has good reason to be annoyed with Hollywood. She’s been working as a writer, director, and producer since the mid-1990s. And while she has two Oscar nominations under her belt (for Before Sunset and Before Midnight, as she, Hawke, and Linklater share writing credits on the films) and a string of critically acclaimed directorial efforts, she’s had a tough go of getting her latest film, A Dazzling Display of Splendor, off the ground—despite having what she describes as one of the best screenplays she has ever written, plus Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke attached. “And yet I’m still struggling,” she says. “Non-stop. I have so many movies in my drawers that will never be shot, if you only knew! I’m fed up.”
While Delpy’s desire to walk away from it all is understandable, she admitted that her passion for storytelling is hard to deny, or ignore. “I like to create, to tell stories,” she says. “It’s stronger than me.”
So maybe there is hope that a fourth Before movie could still happen… even if it’s another decade or two before it’s released. Before Bingo, set in a nursing home, has a certain ring to it.
(Via The Playlist)
