Before Sunrise, or, uh, Before I Sleep I Guess?

Dating apps are awful - or at least that’s what everyone says. I know I’ve said it a lot. You don’t have to use them for long to realise that half the people are lying and the other half really should be. It makes you wonder : what happened to meeting people organically? To romance? To love stories like Before Sunrise?

Well I have a hot take : dating apps? They’re actually just like Before Sunrise. It sounds crazy, I know, but just hear me out.

As a hopeless romantic at heart, it’s honestly a shock that I only watched Before Sunrise recently. Really, though, it would have taken me even longer if it weren’t for someone I met online. I’m not here to talk about that, though - what matters is just one line he told me : “I wish I had met you on a train.” That’s how he first introduced me to the film.

If you haven’t watched it, Before Sunrise is basically a love story that lasts from one afternoon until the next sunrise. Two strangers meet on a train, impulsively decide to spend a day in a city neither of them know, fall in love, and then part at sunrise with a vague plan to meet again in a few months. To say I was blushing that the guy I was talking to was hoping for something so romantic with me… well, that would be an understatement.

But then again, as I watched it I couldn’t help but feel angry and maybe even a bit depressed. Everything in Before Sunrise felt so soft and ephemeral. There was an honesty, a purity in it even, that I don’t see reflected in the “hey”s and “god ur hot”s that dominate dating apps. There wasn’t much I could do about it, though. Life was just better back then, I figured, and I’d have to resign myself to the reality that I was born long after romance had died.

I reported all these feelings back to the guy who had recommended it to me, of course. That’s just basic etiquette after someone recommends you a film. He didn’t have much to say in response, however, so we just kind of moved on. Our conversation slowly covered everything - our lives, our hobbies, our feelings, our fears, our beliefs - all without meeting each other. It wasn’t long before my morning walks felt a lot warmer thanks to the memories of everything we’d said to each other.

And that’s when it hit me.

The romance of Before Sunrise, for me at least, lies in the beauty of the characters’ vulnerability. It’s the kind of reckless honesty that you can only really find in strangers and intimate relationships - but of course, to create an intimate relationship, you need to be recklessly honest with a stranger first. But that kind of vulnerability doesn’t require two people to see each other, or to randomly meet each other on a train. All it takes is strangers deciding to try to be known - even if that decision takes little more than a swipe to the right.

As soulless as dating apps seem, at their core they’re still about two strangers trying to stop being strangers. In a world where everything is online and the internet is forever, it’s hard to find a safe space to be oneself, but dating apps, especially those where you can filter for people who don’t live near you, offer a space for momentary anonymity. The flirtation is fleeting, the future uncertain, but right now you can bare your soul for someone else to see - at least until you sign off for the night.

I’m not saying this is the common dating app experience, of course. It’s not easy to find someone whom you connect with enough to be that open. But let’s be honest, if either Jesse or Céline were replaced by someone else, they wouldn’t have had their magical night either. The problem isn’t dating apps - it’s finding the right person. If you can manage that, it doesn’t matter where you are or where you met. The magic is already there.

It’s like Céline says : “if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us… but just this little space in between”.

Love stories still happen everyday, even in the modern world and yes, even on terrible apps like Tinder. As long as you’re open, honest, and genuinely trying to get to know someone, it will happen. And another important note : love stories don’t have to last forever. Even if you’re looking for someone to spend the rest of your life with, I promise the week-long flirtations will bring you joy too, because honest connection is the most precious thing in this world.

As for the guy who recommended the film to me, I don’t think we’ll be getting our Before Sunset - as much as we get along, we’re still too different for it to go anywhere. But just because we’ll never meet in real life doesn’t mean I’ll treasure it any less. If anything, it’s part of what motivates me to keep trying.