LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD (BEFORE MIDNIGHT)

In 1954, the Italian director Roberto Rossellini made the post-War drama, 'Viaggo in Italia' (Journey to Italy) about a British couple whose marriage was disintegrating.

Recently re-released in arthouse cinemas, 'Viaggo in Italia' features Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders as Katherine and Alex Joyce who arrive in Naples to sell a property owned by a recently deceased relative called Uncle Homer and do a little sightseeing while they are there.

As they embark on their odyssey, the Joyces bicker, head off on their own separate sightseeing jaunts, contemplate divorce and are deeply affected by the landscape around them.

This ultimately leads to a gripping conclusion that will impact on their marriage at the ruins of Pompei.

Watching it now, Rossellini's film is way ahead of its time.

Rossellini is not afraid to tip a nod during the course of the film to other works of art. 

The choice of names for his characters - Homer and Joyce - deliberately alludes to classic literature and one sequence seems to specifically draw on the Michael Fury story in James Joyce's 'The Dead'.

But the film also isn't afraid to capture the more mundane details of everyday life in its quest for a more truthful depiction of its characters.

Born out of the Italian neo-realist tradition of long takes and natural locations, Rossellini adopts a style which would later influence not just the French New Wave but Michaelangelo Antonioni, John Cassavetes and filmmakers today like Michael Haneke.

His detached style, like Haneke's, casts the audience in the role of participant - challenging them to take in the full import of what is unfolding on onscreen and absorbing them in a very realistic drama.

Rossellini's film was savaged, however, on its release by American and Italian film critics who claimed it was dull, ponderous, poorly plotted and too introspective.

In hindsight, the ferocity of some of those reviews may have been influenced by the moral outrage caused by Rossellini and Bergman's affair on the 1950 movie 'Stromboli' that ended their respective marriages,

In France, however, the New Wave/Cahiers du Cinema set immediately grapsed what Rossellini was doing and hailed 'Viaggo in Italia' as a masterpiece. 

Jean Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette, in particular, championed Rossellini's film, describing it as a beautiful work of art.

Fifty nine years later, 'Viaggo in Italia' looms large in arguably the most dialogue driven trilogy in the history of American cinema.

Richard Linklater's new movie, 'Before Midnight' is the third film in a charming indie series charting the romance of Julie Delpy's Celine and Ethan Hawke's Jesse.

The first film in the series, 'Before Sunrise' in 1995, was flushed with the possibilities of young love, with its main characters, the backpacking Jesse and Celine meeting on a train from Budapest, striking up an immediate rapport, disembarking to walk around Vienna and flirtatiously talking about love, life, religion and their observations of the city around them.

'Before Sunrise' studiously shunned Hollywood convention and had an open ending, with Jesse about to leave for the US and the two lovers resolving to meet again but not swapping addresses. 

Nine years would elapse before we would find out what happened to them in the sequel 'Before Sunset', with Jesse, now married with a son, in Paris to promote a novel based on his brief encounter with Celine.

Celine catches Jesse by surprise by turning up at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore and with only an hour to kill before he catches his flight back home, the two of them wander around the streets of Paris catching up on each other's lives and rediscovering the romantic spark that existed in Vienna.

As the hour runs out, they desperately pour out their feelings for each other.

Linklater yet again gave audiences an open ending, with Jesse winding up in Celine's apartment and facing the possibility of missing his flight home.

Like its predecessor, 'Before Sunset' was still in the throes of romantic possibility, albeit offering up a more complex, messy vision of a 21st century love affair.

Nine years later, the lovers are back in 'Before Midnight' - now in their forties and this time on holiday in Greece.

Linklater's film begins in an airport but this time neither Celine nor Jesse is leaving. 

Instead it is Jesse's son, Hank (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) from his now broken first marriage.

In these awkwardly tender and achingly truthful opening moments, Jesse struggles to connect with the boy and is racked with pain and guilt as he bids Hank farewell.

When he leaves the airport, Linklater confronts us with the realisation that Jesse is now in a relationship with Celine and they have twin daughters who sleep in the back of the car as they head back to the villa where they are staying.

Celine and Jesse play their usual, mesmerising game of verbal ping pong but this time it is no longer as gentle and playful - the lovers occasionally take an aggressive pot shot.

Like the Joyces in 'Viaggo in Italia', as Jesse and Celine travel through the gorgeous Mediterranean landscape, they wrestle with the demands and the banality of domestic life - Delpy's character is juggling motherhood with professional ambition, while Hawke is pulled between his yearning to be more of a dad to Hank and his responsibilities at home.

A suggestion by him during the drive that they might consider living in Chicago goes down like a lead balloon with Celine and it is the first real sign that there is trouble in paradise.

As we subsequently watch the couple at a pretentious dinner party and later during one of their trademark walking and talking sequences through a pretty Greek village, there is a subtext of growing resentment, especially when a starstruck hotel clerk asks Celine to sign Jesse's novel.

That resentment finally and thrillingly erupts in the final third of the film.

'Before Midnight' is one of the most carefully and beautifully constructed and intelligently paced films you will see this year.

Like Haneke's 'Amour', in this age of heavy montage editing, it is refreshing to see a film steeped in the cinematic tradition of the long take and natural locations.

It is exhilarating and rewarding to be treated as an adult and asked to concentrate on what is unfolding onscreen.

Linklater once again shares a screenwriting credit with his improvising stars Delpy and Hawke in a screenplay that does not miss a beat.

Many couples will recognise the feelings that Celine and Jesse express during the course of the movie and possibly the language used in the more heated moments.

In fact, it would be interesting to test how male and female audiences identity with Celine and Jesse's frustrations and whether their sympathies ever cross gender boundaries.

Much like Danny de Vito's more cartoonish battle of the sexes, 'War of the Roses' with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, 'Before Midnight' asks whether a man and a woman can sustain an intense romance in the face of domestic pressures - albeit it does this in a more sophisticated and nuanced way.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than at the dinner party sequence, where Celine and Jesse are confronted with a younger version of themselves, Anna (Arian Labed) and Achilleas (Yiannis Papadopoulos)  - full of romantic spark, yet more cynical about their future.

Hawke and Delpy are in sparkling form, relishing their dialogue and bravely showing the flaws in this once golden Generation X couple.

The interplay between Celine and Jesse is still delightful but it is much, much edgier - occasionally pretentious and self-absorbed, sometimes interesting, very often funny yet sometimes showing signs of weariness, at times exasperating and petty.

Hawke and Delpy are surrounded by a terrific cast, with Oscar winning cinematographer Walter Lassaly stepping in front of the camera to play elderly author Patrick who hosts the couple in his villa, Xenia Kalogeropoulou as the widowed Natalia and particularly, Panos Koronis and Athina Rachel Tsangari Ariadni shining as a well matched, self-deprecating couple.

Christos Voudouris' cinematography may not be showy but it brilliantly showcases its Greek setting - there are gorgeous images of a sunset as Jesse and Celine sit watching it in a harbour.

In many ways, Greece is the perfect setting in these recessionary times for Linklater's more cynical look at love and relationships. Just as there has been trouble in this Mediterranean paradise, there is trouble in the romantic paradise of Jesse and Celine.

Linklater wisely leaves the door open for a fourth outing - probably in nine years time.

But where will it be located? Chicago, still in Europe or elsewhere?

Who knows? But Linklater and his cast leaves us, wanting more to see how Jesse and Celine's once fine romance is holding up.

('Before Midnight' opened in the Queen's Film Theatre in Belfast on June 28, 2013 and is showing in other UK and Ireland cinemas. This review originally appeared on Eamonnmallie.com)