“十年一觉扬州梦”也好，“荒唐一炮十八年，依旧是不懂爱也不懂情”也罢，话唠爱情三部曲走过九年接一个九年，有人看见慈悲，有人看见残忍。杰西和席琳在维也纳邂逅，在巴黎重逢，在希腊度假争吵；电影外的Ethan Hawke和Julie Delpy走过20、30、40，男主却说“主角并不是我们，而是时间”。

　　

　　同一个导演，同一对男女主角，跨越十八年演绎同一个延续的故事。从圣丹斯电影节首映之后人们就开始的期待林克莱特这部新片《爱在午夜降临前》，准确地说，是期待知道继九年前杰西和席琳在巴黎重逢后怎么样了。

　　我必须为主创们的勇气鼓掌，顶着狗尾续貂的嫌疑，把故事的背景搬到了希腊，话唠的内容换成了柴米油盐，美男变大叔，文艺女青年也终有了肚腩和大屁股，岁月是把杀猪刀啊——人们趋之若鹜总不能就是为了此番感叹，而是在时光节节败退后，他们还在争吵，也还在相爱：杰西（Jessie）和美国的妻子离了婚，和席琳（Celine）生活在法国，并已育有一对双胞胎女儿；在希腊度过的这个假期，让他们婚姻中积累的矛盾一再浮现。不变的长镜头，不变的简洁流畅配乐，两个人不变的絮叨却大量留在了封闭的汽车内、昏暗的室内，即便是在开阔的希腊庄园里，同座的也有一众人，年轻小情侣坦言结婚了也可能离婚，老妇人说怀念亡夫却也抵挡不住记忆流失，两人听着他们说着的话，像惊见自己的前世今生。十八年前在火车上的相遇，她决定跟他下车，九年后他决定为她误飞机，一切都像是一场人生赌注，现在到了该清算的时候。

爱在黎明破晓前




爱在日落黄昏时




爱在午夜降临前




If you stick around through the closing credits of Before Midnight, the latest film in the trilogy that also includes Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, you’ll see that the movie is dedicated to someone whose name even the most die-hard fans have never heard before: Amy Lehrhaupt. Almost 25 years ago, Lehrhaupt met a young man named Richard Linklater and spent a night with him that he never forgot. Their encounter inspired Linklater to conceive and direct Before Sunrise, the first film in the series. She never saw it, though; unbeknownst to Linklater, by the time that movie came out, Lehrhaupt was dead.

《爱在午夜降临前(Before Midnight)》是包括《爱在日出之前(Before Sunrise)》、《爱在日落之前(Before Sunset)》在内的三部曲之中的最后一部。如果你坚持看完了这部电影结束时的演职员名单的话，你会看到导演将这部电影献给了一个人，而这个人的名字就算是最死忠的影迷也从没有听说过——艾米·赖豪普特（Amy Lehrhaupt）。差不多25年前，艾米·赖豪普特遇见了一个叫做理查德·林克莱特（Richard Linklater）的年轻人，并与之共度一晚，这一晚让他难以忘怀。他们的这次偶遇激发了林克莱特构想并执导《爱在日出之前》的灵感，这也是此三部曲中的第一部。然而，她并没有看到该片，因为林克莱特并不知道，在这部影片上映之前，赖豪普特已经香消玉殒了。

　　

Linklater never mentioned Lehrhaupt by name in the press before promoting Before Midnight—Ethan Hawke has said that the director was uncomfortable mentioning her until “extremely recently”—but he has long made brief references to their encounter. From a number of interviews he’s done over the years, we can now piece together the complete story of how Lehrhaupt helped inspire the series.

在宣传推广《爱在午夜降临前》之前，林克莱特从未在媒体上提及过赖豪普特的名字。伊桑·霍克（Ethan Hawke）曾说过，导演林克莱特直到“非常近的最近”，一直都对提及她感到不自在。但是，林克莱特在很久以前就曾简略的提到过他们的相遇。我们现在则可以从这多年来他参与过的多个采访中拼凑出这个完整的，关于赖豪普特如何激发了这一系列电影创作灵感的故事。

　　

Linklater met Lehrhaupt in fall 1989, when he was visiting his sister in Philadelphia. He was 29 and had just finished shooting Slacker, and was staying there for one night while passing through on the way home from New York. Lehrhaupt was several years younger, about 20. They met in a toy shop, and ended up spending the whole night together, “from midnight until six in the morning,” “walking around, flirting, doing things you would never do now.” As in Before Sunrise, most of what they did was talk, “about art, science, film, the gamut.” Did they kiss? Yes. Did they have sex? The Times went so far as to ask Linklater in a recent interview, but he said he wants to “leave a little mystery.”

林克莱特与赖豪普特相遇在1989年的秋天，他正在费城拜访他的sister。他时年29岁，刚完成了电影《都市浪人（Slacker）》的拍摄，在从纽约返回家的途中，在那里经停一晚。赖豪普特比他小几岁，大约20岁。他们在一家玩具商店相遇，最后共度了整夜。“从午夜直到凌晨六点”，“四处闲逛、调情、做着那些你现在永远不会去做的事”，就像在《爱在日出之前》一样，他们所做的绝大部分事情就是聊天，“聊艺术、科学、电影，聊所有东西”， 他们接吻了吗？是的。他们做爱了吗？在泰晤士报（The Times）最近采访林克莱特时询问他到这个地步，但他说，他想保留一丝神秘。

　　

Even in the midst of that romantic night, the filmmaker in Linklater couldn’t help but consider its cinematic possibilities. In a 2004 interview with the New York Times, he remembered “walking around [thinking], ‘If I could just capture this feeling I’m having right now,’ instead of actually having that feeling.” On a recent episode of the podcast The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith, he recalled mentioning the movie idea to Lehrhaupt that night:

即使是在这样一个浪漫的夜晚中，林克莱特身体里电影制作人的身份无法自已的考虑起把它拍摄成电影的可能性。在2004年一次与纽约时报（The New York Times）的采访中他谈到，他记得“四处走动，[思考着]，‘我要能把我现在的感觉捕捉保留下来就好了，而不是只是实实在在的感受到它。’ 在最近某集的播客节目《与杰夫·戈德史密斯（Jeff Goldsmith）一起问与答（The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith）》中，林克莱特回忆起他在那晚向赖豪普特提起这个拍电影的主意：

　　

|||Even as that experience was going on … I was like, “I’m gonna make a film about this.” And she was like, “What ‘this’? What’re you talking about?” And I was like, “Just this. This feeling. This thing that’s going on between us.”|||

|||正当那种体验还在继续的时候，我就说：“我要把它拍成电影。”她说：“‘它’是什么？你在说什么啊？”然后我说：“它就是‘这个’，这个感觉，这个在我们之间流动的东西。”|||

　　

But as the night came to an end, the paths of Linklater and Lehrhaupt began to diverge from the fictional storyline of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy). In fact, on The Q&A, Linklater revealed that the ending of Before Sunrise was in part a response to what happened with him and Lehrhaupt. Unlike Jesse and Céline, who agree to reconvene in six months, the real-life young lovers exchanged numbers and tried to keep in touch while they were away. They called each other a few times, but it was “that long distance thing” that did them in. “It sort of did the fizzle,” he says, “So in the first movie that was a thing, the idea that they would intellectually kind of get beyond that and say ‘Well, we’re on different continents. What are the odds that it’s gonna work. Let’s just commit to this night.’ ”

但是，在那晚结束之后，林克莱特与赖豪普特的人生道路和虚构的故事情节中杰西（Jesse）（伊桑·霍克饰）与赛琳（Céline）（朱莉·德尔佩饰）两人的人生轨迹比起来，变得越来越大相径庭。实际上，在那个问与答播客节目上，林克莱特透露说，《爱在日出之前》的结局部分程度上是对发生在他和赖豪普特身上事情的一个回应。与杰西和赛琳两人约定6个月后再见不同的是，现实中的这两个年轻爱人互相交换了电话号码，并试图在他们分别期间保持联系。他们给对方打过几次电话，但"远距离恋爱"把他们搞的疲惫不堪，“我们的关系慢慢的就虎头蛇尾的结束了，”林克莱特接着说：“所以在第一部电影中也将它反映了出来，他们在理智上越过了它，说‘唉，我们生活在不同的大陆上，这段感情不太可能发展下去，我们就尽情投入这一个夜晚吧。’”

　　

Linklater soon became involved with another woman, who “swept into [his] life ... and took over for about a year or so,” and he and Lehrhaupt never talked again. He did think that maybe “she would show up at a Before Sunrise screening or something.” In Before Sunset, Céline shows up at a reading of Jesse’s book This Time, which is based on their night together. “It would be so weird,” he said, in 2004. But she never did.

林克莱特不久就和另一个女人发展起了亲密的关系，这个女人“走进并执掌了他的生活……大约一年多，”之后，他和赖豪普特再没有交谈过。他确曾想过，或许“她会出现在《爱在日出之前》的一次放映时，或诸如此类的。”在《爱在日落之前》中，赛琳出现在杰西的书《这一次/这时光（This Time）》的读书会上，而那本书就是依据他们共处的那一晚而写的。“（她若出现在《爱在日出之前》的一次放映时，）那一定会感觉很怪异。”林克莱特在2004年这样说。但是，她从来没有出现过。

　　

Linklater didn’t know then that Lehrhaupt had died in a motorcycle accident on May 9, 1994, before she reached her 25th birthday. Before Sunrise started filming a few weeks later. Linklater only learned of her death three years ago, when a friend of Lehrhaupt’s, who knew about the encounter, put it together and sent him a letter. “It was very sad,” Linklater told the Times. Ethan Hawke was similarly devastated when he heard it, though he reminded Linklater that if he hadn’t met her, then he never would have made these movies or met some of the people who worked on them with him. “Who knows how we reverberate through each other’s lives,” Linklater reflected in another interview, “But she’s an inspiration on this.”

那个时候，林克莱特并不知道赖豪普特已于1994年5月9日死在一场摩托车车祸中，那时还不到她25岁的生日。《爱在日出之前》则于几周后开始拍摄。林克莱特直到3年前才获悉她的死讯，一个知道他们二人那次相遇的赖豪普特的朋友，集合了这些消息，发了一封信给他。林克莱特告诉泰晤士报：“我感到非常悲伤。” 伊桑·霍克获悉这个消息的时候，也同样悲痛万分，不过他还是提醒林克莱特，如果他未曾遇见过她，那他也就不会创作出这些电影，以及遇见一些跟他一起，为这些电影而努力工作的人。林克莱特在另一个采访中深思反省道：“谁也不知道我们怎样在彼此的生命中交织回荡出声响，但她是这回荡声响的灵感。”

　　

In this way, Linklater did find another way to make that feeling, that “thing in the air” they once had between them, last: He turned it into cinema.

就这样，林克莱特，他最终，还真是，找到了另一条创造那感觉的途径，那种他们曾经拥有的，回荡在他们之间的，“漂浮在空气里的东西”——他把它变成了电影。