Once In A Lifetime

John Carney’s musical Once, winner of audience awards at the Sundance and Dublin film festivals, is a delight, a wonderfully sincere and affecting musical told with rare charm. The last time we saw Frames front man Glen Hansard in the movies, he was Outspan Foster in Alan Parker’s The Commitments, busking for change in the film’s ‘where-are-they-now’ finale. Fifteen years later, Once opens with the rangy, bearded singer belting out a tune on Grafton Street, his keening voice bouncing off the limestone as he grips his battered guitar. His unnamed character, dubbed The Guy in the press notes, lives at home with his supportive father (Bill Hodnett) above their Hoover repair shop, drinking tea in the twilight beside the range. He is a good son, helping out in the poky shop, picking up groceries, but behind Hansard’s cheerful, open attitude, he is hiding a broken heart, having being dumped by his girl (Marcella Plunkett) months before. He keeps her photo beside his bed and we see him going over holiday videos, recycling old memories and mementos for the last shreds of emotion.

Most days, he goes out to a spot on Grafton St, singing his quietly devastating songs about lost love and regret, while slowly formulating hopes for recording an album of his songs, moving to London and doing the rounds of the record companies. One day, a Czech immigrant girl, also unnamed but wonderfully played by Markéta Irglová, stops to listen, and the two strike up a friendship, drinking coffee and walking the streets together. He clearly likes her, but things aren’t that simple for her, supporting her mother and toddler daughter by selling flowers and working as a cleaner. Back in the Czech Republic, she was a musician, trained in the piano by her father. One afternoon, the two wander into Walton’s music store, sit at a piano that costs as much as a luxury car and play a song called Falling Slowly (from the album the two musicians recorded together called The Swell Season). It’s a terrific scene, making the case for the rest of the film in its vibrancy and simplicity and it’s poetic sense of live performance. As their relationship develops, so does the music, as he finds out more about her life in Dublin, her failing marriage and she offers the lovelorn busker something to dream about. Over the course of a week or so, the rapport they have found leads them to taking out a bank loan, conscripting a small backup band and recording an album together. And that’s about it for synopsis, except to say that throughout there are well judged, occasionally funny observations about modern urban Irish life, the immigrant experience and the struggle for artists to express themselves.

Carney and his cinematographer Tim Fleming (who also shot Niall Heery’s upcoming and not altogether dissimilar Small Engine Repair) take an unadorned, unaffected approach to the film’s photography, making good use of the digital video, natural light and practical interiors. A scene on Dalkey Hill, looking out over Dublin Bay, is a highlight, the two actors standing in eerie, three-dimensional sunlight. A later scene at a photographer's house party, where a round table of singers and musicians perform, is another standout. Once isn’t a pretty film, but it is soulful and delicate in its own way and always visually interesting.

It is impossible to be cynical about this film, or judge the performers too harshly, because this simple, unpretentious film is about a collection of songs, not scenes, a ‘video album’, according to the director. Carney, who used to play bass in The Frames, clearly trusted his cast to be able to play themselves, which is more or less what they are asked to do. They are both clearly talented musicians, happiest when performing and especially radiant when playing together, but neither of them would ask to be called actors and the straightforward story, which is mostly improvised, doesn’t make undue demands on them. When the script moves on, they visibly struggle, like in a long dialogue scene over a ride on a motorbike that falls badly flat or a clunky seduction scene.

In an age where blockbusters budget at least half their cost again for marketing, making expensive, attention-seeking noise to bully the audience, Once proves that good movies can stand quietly on their own merits. There is a danger that the Sundance win might overwhelm the film’s own simple ambitions, creating a heightened sense of expectation that it might struggle to meet, but taken for what it is, Carney’s film serves as a beacon for Irish filmmakers, proving that a small budget is no obstacle to a stout heart.