Maybe I'm just being too literal, but the last few minutes puzzle me. It seems that Willie has inadvertently gone to Budapest -- he boarded the plane a few minutes before take off, and presumably was stuck. Eddie just drove away. Ok. But Eva was keen to use the money she had just received to get to Europe, bought a ticket for Budapest, and boarded (the clerk told Willie). How then does she show up back at the motel??
shareI guess we just have to assume that she had a lot of change left from booking the flight and got a taxi or something.
shareShe doesn't actually buy the ticket. That scene cuts with her still pondering -- she doesn't really want to go to Budapest but that's the only flight to Europe she can get that same day. She's tired of the US but doesn't want to go back to Hungary. The next scene is over half an hour later, the ticket agent has handled who knows how many customers in the mean time, and Willie even says "he thinks she got on some flight". We know from the later scene that she didn't really get on the plane, and probably just wandered off without buying a ticket. The ticket agent didn't know -- not his job to keep track of her.
We don't really know for sure what happened after Willie went to retrieve Eva. Eddie assumes (we hear him say) that Willie got stuck on a flight to Budapest. But did he really? How would Eddie know what flight he saw taking off? The airport is not identified -- it's filmed in Melbourne but the setting is just vaguely Florida -- but any US airport busy enough to have a direct flight to Budapest would have lots of flights. And even if Willie got stuck on a flight, was it the one to Budapest? In the conversation at the airport, he just says "some flight". And did he really get stuck, or had he just not made it out of the airport to the car when Eddie sees a plane take off? Would Eddie even know how long it would be before the flight took off? Not likely.
So Eva just wandered out of the airport without getting on that flight, maybe without buying a ticket at all -- after all, it was just a whim. And having no place to go, she wandered back to the hotel. No telling whether Eddie went back there.
Edward (whose sister is currently enjoying a vacation in Budapest)
-Eva is conflicted about whether to move on to Europe or stay with the boys
-Willie appears to end up on the plane on his own
It doesn't matter whether Eva bought the ticket or not. Either way the same two points are made. But I think Willie does end up on the plane simply because of the darkly comedic irony of it. Throughout the film he's dismissive, even embarrassed, of his Hungarian heritage (demanding Lotte speak English, saying he doesn't consider himself part of the family, bristling at the accusation he isn't American, the prominent TV dinner, Budweiser, clothes and other US stereotypes and tropes etc.). For him to inadvertently end up going back to Budapest is exactly the sort of moment we should expect at the end of a film like this, it's perfectly ironic and comical.
We don't know how long Eddie was waiting. The plane taking off appears to be the catalyst for him giving up, but that doesn't mean that he believes Willie was on that particular plane. Personally I think he does think that, and that we're supposed to as well. Logically perhaps it's questionable as there may be many flights (though we don't know for sure and Eddie did know exactly when it was taking off because he hurried Willie along saying 'four minutes'). But the film isn't entirely logical and the moment rings true in the language of cinema, without wanting to sound pretentious!