73%User score 73 percent
The Illusionist
2006 · Fantasy · Drama
User Score
4.8K votes
Can the greatest romance of your life last only one night?
An unexpected meeting on a train leads two travelers to spend an evening wandering through Vienna. As the night unfolds, they share stories and conversations about life and love, exploring new ideas while a quiet intimacy grows between them, knowing it may be their only night together.
Recommendations based on this film
edward
February 19, 2017
Box office $ 5.5 million This was the first time I saw a movie that had nothing close to a human antagonist, yet it kept me glued to the screen. Sure I've read a few novels of the kind but surely they weren't "oh I'm glued" stuff. Everybody at least once in their life dreams of something like this and this movie makes it believable. After watching the movie I really thought that Ethan & Julie must have dated 'cause t…
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Filipe Manuel Neto
October 6, 2023
**A very simple but very human film, with very good feelings and dialogue.** Contrary to what I like to do, I saw this film after seeing its sequel, “Before Sundown”. It's a very nice story about an American tourist who is enchanted by a French student he meets on the train on the way to Vienna, and invites her to spend some time with him. The rest of the film is an intense dialogue between the two through the street…
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CinemaSerf
July 3, 2026
After about five minutes of this, I was resigned to watching a reimagining of "Brief Encounter" (1945) and started to give up. Then, it began to take an altogether different tack as we meet a young and fairly penniless American "Jesse" (Ethan Hawke) who starts chatting with "Celine" (Julie Delpy) on a train journey and there is a visually striking chemistry on display pretty much from the start as their conversation…
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