Once

I only got around to seeing this today and I wish it hadn’t taken me so long.  A love story musical shot in Dublin over 17 days for around €100k with two musicians as the lead characters wouldn’t generally equate to an excellent film but that’s what happened.

If you enjoy films like Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Garden State and Elizabethtown then you’ll love this too. In fact, Once is a more realistic view of the boy-meets-girl story. The characters are lower working class and one of them busks for a living, which is where they meet. I’m sure most English speaking viewers understand Marketa Irglova’s Czech accent better than the strong Dublin accent of Glen Hansard. The characters aren’t given names other than “guy” and “girl”, probably to represent the universality of their story.

The music is very good and adds well to the emotion of the film. I recommend you get your hands on this if you haven’t seen it yet. 7 crumbs out of 10.

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