Movie review: ONCE

What a fantastic little film this is!

Made on a microscopic budget it centres around a friendship between a busker and a piano playing immigrant from the Czech Republic.

And shock horror! It's a sort of musical - the lady kicks this songwriter up the arse and gets him into gear, and into the recording studio and we get the results in front of us.

The budget according to the making of was a mere £100k, and the songwriters in he film actually wrote all the songs and very pretty they are too. Because of the lower budget and different subject matter I was at a bit of a loss how to justify the high score in normal terms.

The actors, considering the main characters aren't really actors is fantastic, the direction is laissez-faire in style and to get more naturalistic performances from the leads, many shots were done by long lens out of sight of the two main characters to free them up a bit and it REALLY pays off.

The story is, of course, an old one, but the whole crew and cast should be applauded for avoiding the really obvious cliches and particularly in the guy's (none of the characters of any note are referred to by name) relationship with his father tonnes is said with almost no dialogue.

Whoopee!

I have been a bit sensible in knocking halff a point off, since after a while the music starts to get a litte samey (after all, its a heartbroken guy singer songwriter so Damien Rice/David Gray style is the order of the day) and its not my first choice of prodution values... the songs are good enough to rise above these restrictions and I came out the other side of this film loving every minute.

I will temper this by saying its not for everyone, not a huge amount happens and it may be a little low key for everyone's tastes, but all in all, I find it almost faultless on its own merits...

Hence 9.5/10.

I hope if you do see it, you like it as much as I did. If not, I will understand though - it may not be for everyone.

A

P.S. Good and Interesting by the way (not dull and bad)