Last week I saw one of the best rated movies of the year so far, Once, which is about an Irish street musician and a flower-seller/ musician that he meets. I wanted to see it at the SF International Film Festival, but I missed my chance. Now it’s in limited (but obviously wider) release.

The plot sort of goes like this: busker sings. busker works in dad’s vacuum repair shop. nosy street flower-and-magazine seller asks him questions. nosy girl is a musician (and a girl!). magic!

It’s a subtle and affecting movie. I went in with pretty high expectations, given the great reviews, so there was a little bit of a “oh. that’s it?” feeling at the end, but that’s not to say it’s not good. The plot twists are pretty unexpected.

The music is a big part of the movie. It’s competent and engaging singer-songwriter stuff from lead actor and singer/ guitarist for the Frames, Glen Hansard. It can be a bit sappy at times, but it’s not music I’m going to write off because of that. The way it fits into the film is very organic. People sitting together at a music store or pulling out a guitar on a bus. There’s none of that Broadway musical-bursting-into-song-at-random-times business. (Though, I was a bit bugged by the fact that instrumentation or voices that weren’t playing or singing on camera were heard—people don’t have samplers in regular real life.)

So, basically, it’s a romance without being Hollywood and a musical without being Broadway (or Bollywood).

The soundtrack streams from the official site.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 12:46 pm Posted by adrian in SF bay area, film, marginally related to music. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.