Once

2006 Irish film by John Carney, who, like most of the actors in the film, is more a musician than a filmmaker. In fact, the two leads aren't actors at all, but musicians who said they felt uncomfortable with filmmaking and would never make another. This is sad to me, b/c I loved this movie. It was so genuine and natural that it almost didn't feel like a movie at all. The story is very simple. Two thirtysomethings meet each other by chance. She's a maid and flower girl who met him when she came to his dad to get her vacuum repaired. He is a street musician. They find that they both love music and together they pull themselves out of their broken homes and impoverished lives and bring rays of hope, where so little light was before. There's no sex, there's no big money. It's just that they discover their own selves by finding each other, two people who seem, somehow or another, to truly get each other. So they start out in a bad way and end in a place of hope. I loved it. The performances are good, the scenes are well shot, the music is good and the overall feel/message of the film was wonderfully endearing.

Worth Watching (borderline BA)