One of my all-time favorites is Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. I enjoy the second film, Before Sunset, best. But the premise of the original Before Sunrise is fantastic. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy meet on a train.
Before Sunrise
Jesse (Hawke) is on his way to Vienna before flying home to the U.S. the next morning. He persuades Céline (Delpy) to get off the train with him in Vienna and spend the night walking around the city, because he has no money for a hotel and because this is their one chance to see what happens between them. His pitch is that years later she might regret not finding out.
Trains can be romantic, even if urban planner types fetishize them to the utmost degree. This is clearly wrong (and I’d point out that there are no kids until the third film, Before Midnight).
Hot take: You simply can't have a Before Sunrise experience on a plane.
More trains means higher birthrates.
— Mark R. Brown, AICP, CNU (@CompletedStreet) April 21, 2026
You cannot just choose to get off a plane somewhere along the way to your destination. It is accurate that trains generally make more stops. So two passengers, heading to different places, aren’t going to just take off together. However,
- They could go off together when the plane lands, whether it’s their destination or a connecting city.
- They could get off at an intermediate stop on an Alaska Airlines intra-Alaska milk run, or the United Island Hopper (but not at all the stops).
- Or just join the Mile High Club.
— aney stokes (@VideosIrish) September 10, 2023
Vienna is so much better than an airplane lavatory, though! Before Sunrise is built around pieces of the city – train station, streets, a record store booth, cafe, cemetery, ferris wheel. Each location changes the emotional backdrop and the conversation that they have. Moving around the city helps the conversation never feel static.
The city is neutral ground (but then again so is the lav). Neither Jesse nor Céline is from there, and they are free of family, friends, and routines. They can become more fully verbal versions of themselves, or the story they tell themselves or who they are and want to be.
Before Sunrise
They are wandering through an old European city full of history, art, and public spaces. They’ve not going to have the same inspired talks about love, time, or regret in an airport hotel bar. I do not mean to downplay the importance of hotels. A chance encounter at the Hyatt Regency Austin put Matthew McConaughey in Linklater’s Dazed and Confused and launched his career.
Spoiler: Paris works so well, too, when they re-connect nine years later in the second film. It’s not the train, though, that brings them together. And it doesn’t see them together for nine more years after that first night.
Nice appeal to nostalgia (and my fondness for choo-choos), Gary!