y the time you finish you post-movie pizza, you may almost have forgotten this little Irish film. Who would have thought the day would come when that would be high praise? Making a film free of images that don’t cause post-traumatic stress disorder is now positively counter-cultural.
This is a love story without sex, an immigration story without controversy, and a down-home picture without a hokey ending. Radical indeed. A busker, guitar-player and vacuum (sorry, “Hoover”) repairman and singer-songwriter meets classically trained Czech pianist, flower seller and domestic in Dublin. They discover that relationships are tough to a soundtrack by Glen Hansard (of independent Dublin-based band “The Frames”).
Hansard plays himself (or does he) and fresh-faced Markéta Irglová (then 17) plays (or does she) the Czech immigrant in a tender duet that makes you wonder where anybody finds the strength to form a couple, yet hoping that everyone will. Endearing. When was the last time you heard that applied to a film? Hansard and Irglova won an Oscar for the song “Falling Slowly.”
