If the standard summer fare from Hollywood—comic book adaptations and the lot—has you down, there are a couple of movies for grownups out there, and they're both—mirabile dictu—from American filmmakers. I highly recommend both Richard Linklater's Before Midnight and Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing.
Linklater's film is the third in his series about the romantic fortunes of Céline (Julie Delpy), who is French, and Jesse (Ethan Hawke), who is American. Before Sunrise (1995) was about their meeting on a trans-European train and decision to spend a few hours together walking and talking along the streets of Vienna. In Before Sunset (2004), they are reunited in Paris when Céline shows up at a booksigning for Jesse, who's just a published a novel based on their encounter of nine years earlier. There's more walking and talking, much as there was in the first film, and the two end up in Céline's apartment. His romantic spark with Céline rekindled, the unhappily married Jesse decides to miss his flight back to the States.
In Before Midnight, we learn that the two have been living together ever since in Paris, and are now the parents of twin girls. This time they're in Greece for a vacation of sorts: there's still more walking and talking—and also driving and talking, dining and talking, and just sitting around and talking. In the last third of the film, all that talking escalates into flat-out argument as contentious issues—hinging mainly on the conflict between Jesse's desire to move to Chicago to be near his son from his first marriage and Céline's to stay in France as she takes on a new, high-responsibility job—come to the fore. It's hard to think of a film outside of anything by Eric Rohmer in which sheer conversation manages to be so riveting. I liked the first two movies a lot, but I think this one is by far the best.That climactic argument, followed by (SPOILER ALERT) a tentative reconciliation, feels heart-achingly real while managing to be quite funny at the same time. Kudos to Linklater and to stars Delpy and Hawke, who collaborated with the director on the script and deliver pitch-perfect performances.
Whedon's movie, of course, is an adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy of love, gossip, envy, and misunderstanding, which was previously filmed in period costume and a Tuscan setting by Kenneth Branagh (1993). Whedon opted for a microbudget approach, shooting most of it at his own home in Santa Monica and using a cast largely familiar from his television work. Plus it's in black and white. (From what I've read, I gather that Whedon undertook it as a kind of therapeutic break from his directorial duties on last summer's big comic-book blockbuster, Marvel's The Avengers.) If you're the sort of purist who disdains modern-dress Shakespeare and insists on British accents, this may not be your cup of tea. But see it with an open mind. I found it delightful.
