He's a vacuum cleaner repairman who moonlights as a street musician; a painful, recent breakup fuels his anguish-drenched lyrics as he strums on a guitar that's falling apart, a good match for the guy playing it. She's a Czech immigrant who sells flowers on the street and cleans houses, caring for her toddler. She's a musician, too, and her split with her husband and her loneliness in a foreign country are the fodder for her songs. Somewhere along the way, what feels like it could be a typical indie boy-meets-girl, do-it-yourself grungy digital feature turns into something special, the best film of 2007 so far and an embodiment of what the digital revolution was supposed to provide but so often doesn't: a small, personal, heartbreaking film that emphasizes the interactions between characters in a compelling way. That it manages this without being ugly or too terribly lit or too terribly reliant on shaky-cam is just icing on the cake.

The guy (Glen Hansard) meets the girl (Marketa Irglova) when she compliments his performance by dropping a dime into his guitar case. They hit it off, sort of: he's a bit brusque and unready to make friends; she's guarded, a combination of her unfamiliarity with English and a bit of world-weary cynicism. But he can fix her vacuum cleaner, which cements their relationship, even when he screws up and tries to get her to sleep with him. The question of what exactly their relationship is is the magic of the film: they grow to be emotionally closer than what passes for love in most films, and they seem to be perfectly matched—they're both talented musicians, he likes her kid, etc. Because this is sort of a musical, their relationship builds through their music (which Hansard and Irglova cowrote): he serenades her in the back of a bus with his guitar and his relationship problems; the pair build a song out of his lyrics and a borrowed piano in a music store; she scribbles words to one of his melodies and then tests the song out during a late-night walk down Dublin's streets. Later, they decide that they have something special enough to put it on tape, so they round up a trio of amusingly fleshed-out buskers ("We only play Lizzy," protests the lead guitarist) and settle down for a blissful weekend of creation. And when it's done...

Despite the fact that the leads aren't seasoned actors, they carry off the non-singing portions as well; unworried about the budgetary concerns of shooting on film, Carney was able to give Hansard and Irglova time to inhabit their characters and get comfortable in front of the camera. Hansard, lead singer of the Irish band The Frames, hasn't acted since playing the guitarist in 1991's The Commitments, but you wouldn't know it. He got the role after Cillian Murphy dropped out a couple weeks into filming. Although I love Murphy and there's no way of telling how the film might have turned out with him in the lead, I can't imagine the film working so perfectly without Hansard up front. Perhaps because he wrote the songs, and perhaps because he lived them as well, his passionate delivery is very nearly earth-shaking; his voice cracks and his anguish is palpable. It took me a while to decide that the combination of Irglova's accent and stand-offishness was not, in fact, poor acting ability, but a conscious character decision. Her distance, her abruptness, and her tendency to weigh her responses for a little longer than seems natural all add to her character's guardedness: she's sure of herself, but unsure of others, so she stays alert.

The film has that grungy digital look, but like the best cinematographers, Tim Fleming plays up to his medium's strengths and deals with its weaknesses effectively. There are some downright gorgeous shot setups here (a visit to the seashore is particularly beautiful), but Fleming and writer-director John Carney wisely eschew a flashy visual style, favoring closeups and two-shots of his lead actors as they build their characters. Much of this occurs through their songs, when their defenses drop. The editing cleverly blurs the moments between the musical numbers and the rest of the film. Many reviews are calling the film a musical, and I suppose it is, but not in the "I'm gonna run over here and sing a song" sense of the genre. It's a film about musicians making their music; its dramatic arc is constructed around the music; and much of what we learn about the characters comes from their music—not as a lazy shortcut, but because the film understands musicians. And people.

—October 3, 2007