A Pretty Good Flick - "Once"

Yeesh – it’s been a week since my last post. Time got away from me there.

Anyway… In that week, I managed to catch the independent film Once, directed by John Carney. I missed it while it was in theatres, but recently checked it out on DVD. Glad I did.

The previews played up the romance angle of the film – unfairly making the film look melodramatic. It really isn’t.

O.K. – the plot, in brief: a vacuum repair man/street musician meets an immigrant woman (her country of origin is never specified) on the streets of Dublin. Over the course of a week or so, they discover a shared interest in music, begin to play a series of songs together, and finally record an album. The street musician begins to think that he’s in love. Sounds cliché.

Yet the film plays wonderfully, and the aforementioned romance angle doesn’t unfold in the expected manner, and is thankfully not overly melodramatic. It doesn’t drown the charms of this rather slight movie.

The songs are certainly not as polished or sophisticated as other, more professional renderings, and while that is a bit of a drawback, actors Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova manage to sell them within the context of the story.

Worth checking out.