Once in a while...

...you come across a beautiful little film. You watch Billy Elliot and you're inspired. You watch Paris, je taime and you believe in love.

Once is such a film.

This is a film you have never seen before. I doubt you will ever see a film like this in the future. Don't go into this film unaware that it involves a scruffy Irish guy from the band The Frames singing through 75% of it. It's a beautiful story about love. Platonic, innocent love that wants to be so much more, but it's not right. The protagonists love for each other is not expressed sexually, but in a much more delicate way through the music they write and perform.

This movie looks like it was made with the money found in one of those Unicef boxes with the multi-ethnic kids on them. But for once, it doesn't matter. The music is so good, the acting is so sincere, it could have been shot on a cell phone and had the same impact.

This film is at times so real, I was honestly disturbed. You feel like a voyeur. But not in a gratuitous, National Lampoon kind of way; rather as an uninvited guest into a glimpse of the lives of the European working class. The only difference being these characters have hauntingly vulnerable singing voices. A lot of reviews have described this film as a musical, and imply that the songs are directly related to the love story being presented. I beg to differ. These songs are not necessarily a narrative guide through the story. They're much more than that. They reveal the characters, not the plot. The songs are simple in musicality, but complex in the way they teach us about their owners, and allow us to invest in their lives for a couple of hours.

The audience during my viewing of this film were not as touched as I was. Perhaps it's because this movie is relative in the way that music tastes are relative. An older couple walking out of the theatre were disappointed in what they labeled "a concert."

You've never seen a concert quite like this.

You won't see a film like this in years.

-AG