dandan.

Hansard plays a lonely, struggling busker on Grafton Street, who meets a Czech girl, played by a new-comer Markéta Irglová, peddling flowers on the same street. He's pursuing his passion, but broken hearted and frustrated. Her passion is playing music, but her circumstances are so that she has to make the ends meet by selling flowers and cleaning big houses. The story is about them meeting, collaborating, falling in love, and ultimately inspiring each other.

It's a perfect idea because Hansard started his musical career as a busker (he is fish in the water performing), he and Irglová have already collaborated as Swell Season (Hansard's solo project), and the movie becomes perfect showcase for the duo's haunting, beautiful tunes.

Its execution is perfect, too. They shot this with hand-held cameras, documentary-style, with an almost off-handed, gorgeous-by-accident looking cinematography. The director, John Carney, was actually a member of the Frames once and a close friend of Hasard. Their rapport translates nicely to a very intimate, immediate feeling of kids hanging out, having fun. In the film's Irish web site, Carney quips: "I was like: 'Brilliant!' This is back to how we were when we were 16, with a camcorder and friends and some songs."

This low-budget, indy art ethos, combined with natural straight-up acting by the non-actors and the simple story-telling, makes for a "musical" that feels authentic and natural. The story lends itself to the format well, as the two spontaneously break into songs quite naturally, in a guitar shop, a studio, his bedroom and a bus.

The story is simple enough. There's not much surprise in the plot, but the songs and chemistry between the cast and the filmmakers provide the hook. The dialog is sparse and the attention was naturally drawn to the songs, whose words are suggestive enough to carry the narrative yet leaving lots of room for imagination. Despite being a bit of music geek, I never sat thorough music movies and paid so much attention to the songs themselves, as I did with this one.

You're moving too fast for me
And I can't keep up with you
Maybe if you slowed down for me
I could see you're only telling
Lies, lies, lies

This over the home-video footage of Hansard's character and his ex-girlfriend, as he writes the song (okay, that scene is a lot less believable than, say, the scene where the two leads spontaneously start singing together in a piano shop. But hey, it's a musical). The song/scene provides much richer experience of what his situation is and what his mental state is than, say, a phone conversation (which happens later in the film, with less gravita and relevance in my opinion).

To me personally, though, it was simply just delightful to see the streets and landscapes of Dublin and Ireland. Hearing "Fair City Waltz" really cracked me up (had to stifle my laugh, as no one else was getting the reference, and the joke that these Russians were learning English through the most revered and lampooned day-time drama in Ireland), and hearing the accent made me nostalgic ("I have a hoover broken" "what's wrong with it?" "Ah, it's focked, yea.").

Another personal highlight in terms of our connection to Ireland: the legendary singer song-writer Fergus O'Farrell (Interference) puts in a cameo appearance during the party scene. He is one of our favorite singers we discovered while in Ireland, and we own a signed copy of his album (If anyone is reading this, you should check out Interference here) now). O'Farrell has collaborated with Hansard before, and his song "Gold" and his presence captures the spirit of the film well. Good to see you, Fergus!