(2007) Director John Carney wrote the original screenplay for this marvelous, intimate portrait, documentary-style, of a guy and a girl who briefly make music together, reminiscent of Before Sunrise; most of the songs on the soundtrack were composed and performed by Glen Hansard, who plays the busker with his acoustic guitar.

In Dublin a Czech girl (Markéta Irglová) compliments a street musician, asking him about the inspiration for his songs, dropping a ten-cent tip. She brings him her Hoover vacuum cleaner, dragging it behind her, to be repaired; he (neither is given a name) works with his dad in a vacuum-cleaner repair shop when he's not on the street singing or composing songs. They perform a duet, she on piano, in a music shop. Her father had been a violinist who committed suicide after he had arthritis; his mother is deceased.

On a bus she persists in asking about the girl who's gone for whom he wrote the songs; she's gone forever, he sings to a tune, having screwed another guy, and now resides in London.

The Czech girl sells flowers on the street, cleans other people's houses, and lives in an apartment with her mother and two-year-old daughter. Her taking a serious interest in his music (providing lyrics to a song) motivates him to get on with his life. He tells her he's made up his mind ("There's no point trying to change it/ When your mind's made up") to go to London to look up his former girlfriend Catherine.

The next morning when he takes her on a ride on his father's motorbike, she confesses she's married to a man in the Czech Republic. She begs him to teach her how to operate the bike - "Just once," she pleads - but he refuses, saying his father doesn't know he's taken it for a spin with her.

He takes out a small-business loan, brings together a band with the girl on keyboards, rents a weekend in a studio (she bargains down the price) with a recording engineer to create a CD of songs to take with him to London. After hearing the first song, Eamon the engineer says: "Wow. That was nice. Did you write that?"

Late at night in the studio between takes, the girl plays one of her unfinished songs on the piano for the guy but begins to cry. He asks if she's written it for her husband; yes, she answers, but he didn't like it. "He's an idiot," says the guy before asking her if she'd come to London with him. "Can I bring my mother?"

Expecting her to stop by before he leaves for London, he's disappointed when she doesn't. On his way to the airport he goes to her apartment, but her mother says she's not in; he then revisits the music store where they first performed together. She's gone forever.

His father, enthusiastic about the songs, tells his son that his mother would be proud of him: "Play it again." You won't want to see this film just once.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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