A trilogy of melancholy: on the bittersweet in Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight

Melancholy is a central expressive property of the Before films and key to understanding and appreciating the trilogy as a whole. Moments of melancholy can be quite brief and subtle when there’s a quick shift of the negative to the positive. But the whole process can also be protracted and very intense, with thoughts that are continuously developing and overlapping, affecting and even looping back on each other, resulting in a prolonged alternation of the bitter and the sweet. Melancholy is manifestly present in the characters’ dialogue and in their facial and bodily expressions. But ‘film expression’ is not exhausted by ‘character expression’. Melancholy is expressed even more clearly and explicitly in the various songs that are used throughout the trilogy. Melancholy, furthermore, is effectively expressed in the trilogy through various cinematic means, such as the soundtrack, certain stylistic devices, notable motifs and a plethora of cinematic references.