I just saw Before Midnight, the third film in Richard Linklater’s triology about Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy), who first meet in their twenties on a train, spend a magical day exploring Vienna together (in Before Sunrise) and reunite in Paris in their thirties (in Before Sunset). Now they’re in their early forties, juggling dual careers, raising twin daughters, going on idyllic Greek island vacations, and struggling to maintain a trans-Atlantic relationship with Jesse’s fourteen-year-old son.

We watch their storybook romance crumbling under the weight of real life. She’s jealous of his successful writing career, which gives him ample freedom to travel and (possibly) cheat on her while she’s stuck at home with the kids. She feels fat and old. She resents having put her career on the back burner. He regrets not being a regular presence in his son’s life. He can’t understand why she isn’t happy with their life together. She thinks she doesn’t love him anymore.

If Jesse and Celine can’t live happily ever after, how can anyone expect a non-cinematic relationship to endure?

The film leaves the fate of the couple uncertain. Linklater has said this will be the last of the series, so we’re left to speculate about whether they’ll stay together. If they do, they’ll have to come to terms with reality in all its messiness and learn to accept each other and themselves, flaws and all.

No relationship is perfect, even ones in the movies if they’re being portrayed honestly. But if you’re a perfectionist, your idealized notions about romance may be making it hard for you to connect and commit for the long haul.

I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to reveal how Before Midnight ends (but if you don’t want to know, stop reading here). Jesse and Celine arrive at an uneasy truce. They see each other for what they are rather than how they wish they would be.

Maybe it’s not so romantic, and it’s certainly far from perfect. But it’s truthful and intimate.

To paraphrase the last line of another movie, “This could be the start of a beautiful relationship.” And isn’t that what we’re all looking for?