Moviola > Films > Once

Once (15) 88 mins

"How often do you find the right person?"

A modern day musical set on the streets of Dublin. Featuring Glen Hansard from the Irish band "The Frames", the film tells the story of a street musician and a Czech immigrant, both nameless, during an eventful week as they write, rehearse and record songs that reveal their unique love story.

"You'd have to be a churl to take against John Carney's bracing, low-budget account of the personal and professional relationship that blooms between an Irish busker (Glen Hansard) and a Czech migrant (Marketa Irglova). It's a soulful valentine to music, friendship and the joys of honest hard graft, played out in the bedsits and recording studios of a deglamourised Dublin, and running to the kind of warm, easy rhythms that typified Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise. The film's unabashed romanticism might start to grate were it not for Carney's sharp feel for the impoverished circumstances of his main characters; the sense that, for all their flirty banter and boisterous singalongs, these people are pretty much clinging on by their fingertips. It's the grit that makes the pearl.  " The Guardian

"Filmed with more efficiency than elegance on the streets of Dublin, Mr Carney's movie does not look, sound or feel like a typical musical.  It is realistic rather than fanciful, and the characters work patiently on the songs rather than bursting spontaneously into them.  But its low-key effect and decidedly human scale endow Once with an easy, lovable charm that a flashier production could never have achieved.  The formula is simple: two people, a few instruments, 88 minutes and not a single false note."

New York Times

"Once has more heart and soul in every single frame than the majority of stuff coming out of Hollywood.  It might be rough around the edges but this charming and winning affair is one of the year's moviegoing highlights."  Tiscali UK

www.foxsearchlight.com/once

Showing:

11-Apr        Melksham

Last modified: 17-Apr-2008

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