Hawke says ‘Before Sunrise’ franchise has legs for several more films

TORONTO – Ethan Hawke says he could easily see his “Before Sunrise” film franchise turning into “a full life project.”

The star-crossed lovers from 1995’s “Before Sunrise” and 2004’s “Before Sunset” return all the wiser in “Before Midnight” this weekend, with Hawke’s unkempt but charming Jesse now several years into a relationship with French intellectual Celine, played by Julie Delpy.

Hawke says the third chapter offers a satisfying follow-up to the loquacious couple’s ongoing love affair, but still leaves the door open to even more cerebral explorations into the nature of love.

“I feel that we could walk away right now,” Hawke says from New York, referring to his co-collaborators Delpy and director Richard Linklater.

“It doesn’t feel unfinished to me the way it kind of did before. But then again I could also see this being a full-life project. I could see us easily making three more — (with the characters in their) 50s, 60s, 70s.”

At any rate, he’d welcome the chance to keep reuniting every nine years or so with Delpy and Linklater, noting that the intense process of co-writing and shooting each instalment has been more fulfilling than most other projects he’s been a part of.

“There’s something so personal about the films, they take a toll. By the time they’re over I really feel like something happened,” says Hawke.

The latest film offers a more mature look at love than the previous two, Linklater adds from his home in Austin, Tex.

While the Vienna-set “Before Sunrise” and Paris-based “Before Sunset” each traced the budding passion between the young romantics, experience and hard-earned life lessons have rooted the Greece-set “Before Midnight” much more in the harsh realities of being in a relationship.

“There is a familiarity that goes along with being together a long time and it’s just kind of fascinating for me to see how people negotiate that space of another human, another complex human,” says Linklater.

“That’s one of the bigger challenges in life — is how to get through all that with your spirit intact.”

From the opening scene, it’s clear that Jesse has paid a big price to pursue a life with Celine. They are now in their early 40s and on vacation in Greece, still flirty and passionate but also stung by countless hurts over the years that have started to accumulate.

“The optimism of feeling good about life, you kind of have to earn it — life doesn’t just hand it to you the way they do in your youth,” Linklater says of his approach this time.

“In your youth, your hormones, body chemistry and view of the world hands you romance, it hands you optimism of the future, it hands you all this and you don’t know anything, you don’t see it as a gift, you see it as just how life is. You live through enough, you get a little older and you realize … you’ve got to really cultivate it and respect it and nurture it and deal with it.”

Hawke describes the first two films as “variations on romantic projection” and the notion “that somebody could be your other half, this kind of dream.”

“And it seemed like the third film couldn’t just do that dance again. We needed to look at: ‘OK what happens when you get what you want? What does that feel like?’ And we all felt kind of excited about the challenge of writing that kind of movie.”

Daunting as it was, deciding to attempt another film began the same way it always does, he adds.

Invariably, the chatter starts up after several years of being apart. Hawke says they each find themselves in New York or Los Angeles at the same time, they go to dinner and eventually start musing on the fate of Jesse and Celine.

Delpy is more specific on how it all went down this time, noting that an outline for part three was hashed out during a meeting in New York in 2010 and another get-together over Christmas 2011.

No storyline is pursued unless all three agree on it, she says, and as a result about “95 per cent” of what was proposed got tossed out the window.

“The dynamic has been the same since the first film,” says Delpy, who reworked “Before Sunrise” with Hawke and Linklater, although they are not credited as writers.

“Richard hired us because he wanted to hire creative people and writers…. So then we started rewriting everything, liking bouncing off ideas, talking about love, what we thought about love and blah blah blah and it was very relevant to who we were because we were also 23, like the characters.”

Each film evolved slightly differently, she adds in a recent interview from Los Angeles.

Delpy says she got the ball rolling on the script for “Before Sunset” — she penned a first draft that incorporated a monologue from Hawke. The trio worked on the story from there, further refining the screenplay during rehearsals in Paris.

For “Before Midnight” they headed straight to Greece without a script at all. They hammered out the words over eight intense weeks last summer. That led straight into rehearsals and then a 15-day shoot.

“Basically we had an outline for 10 pages and that was it when we got to Greece. Which is very scary,” she says.

“It was kind of a fun process because we were also in the location so we could go to the place, rehearse it, see if it worked, rewrite it.”

Hawke says they’ve settled into a comfortable working relationship that continues to inspire.

“When the three of us get together we know our roles, you know — Rick expects a certain thing from me and expects a certain thing from Julie and we expect something from him,” he says.

“It’s a unique collaboration and so it’s kind of worth pursuing because I think together we’re more than we are apart. That’s what brings me back.”

“Before Midnight” opens Friday in Toronto and Vancouver. It opens June 21 in Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Victoria and head to more cities throughout the summer.