A few weeks have passed since I caught this charmer, and it’s continued to grow on me. It’s a brief tale, with music, of a busking guitar player and a Czech girl who meet on the streets of Dublin. I’d call it adorable but that might mean “sappy” to some people, and it’s not at all. The stars, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, are musician-composers who can act rather than the other way ’round, and they’re responsible for the bulk of the singing and playing. Hansard, a member of the Irish rock band the Frames (and friend of director John Carney) who appeared in The Commitments, gets most of the tunes, which range from pleasantly forgettable to memorably fine. His diminutive costar only performs two of her own songs, but they’re lovely and haunting, her voice beautiful. I wouldn’t want to oversell this movie. It’s short and sweet and unassuming. The story is a simple one about the space between friendship and romance. If you absolutely hate singer-songwriter music, then you won’t like at least 25 minutes of this. But there’s an audience for this kind of movie, one that will absolutely take it to heart, and I hope it finds it.
[reviewed 5/31/07]
IMDB link
link to the soundtrack on Amazon
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