"Once:" The rare love story without sex
While attending the Catholic Press Convention in NYC a couple of weeks ago, I ventured to an independent film theater on one of our open nights and saw the film, "Once." Shot for just $150,000, it is the first film in some time that I'm eagerly recommending to friends.
It's about "the guy," an Irish street musician who fixes vacuum cleaners for a living, who meets "the girl," a Czech immigrant relocated to Dublin to start a new life and who becomes a fan of the guy's music. Turns out she's a musician too and the two quickly strike up a friendship based on their love of music and art. Along the way, the friendship helps each of them to deal with a major hurt in their life that they're running away from. The film unfolds in a bittersweet, yet uplifting way that is just right.
Maybe it's conditioning from today's films, but there are a couple of moments when you expect them to consummate their affections through sex, but it never happens (even though they want to). The scenes are honest and even inspiring, as the main characters (particularly "the girl")make the kind of decisions that you wouldn't find in, say, the most popular film out right now, "Knocked Up." The film isn't particularly religious in its theme, but the chaste relationship speaks louder than any forced scene of characters entering a church, etc... As Christopher West said in his Body Language column for the March 9 Herald:
It's about "the guy," an Irish street musician who fixes vacuum cleaners for a living, who meets "the girl," a Czech immigrant relocated to Dublin to start a new life and who becomes a fan of the guy's music. Turns out she's a musician too and the two quickly strike up a friendship based on their love of music and art. Along the way, the friendship helps each of them to deal with a major hurt in their life that they're running away from. The film unfolds in a bittersweet, yet uplifting way that is just right.
Maybe it's conditioning from today's films, but there are a couple of moments when you expect them to consummate their affections through sex, but it never happens (even though they want to). The scenes are honest and even inspiring, as the main characters (particularly "the girl")make the kind of decisions that you wouldn't find in, say, the most popular film out right now, "Knocked Up." The film isn't particularly religious in its theme, but the chaste relationship speaks louder than any forced scene of characters entering a church, etc... As Christopher West said in his Body Language column for the March 9 Herald:
Maybe, as John Paul II himself emphasized (in his "theology of the body"), these are simply truths that find an echo in every human heart.
Barb Nicolosi of Act One, on her Church of the Masses blog, gives an excellent review of the film. You may have to scroll down a couple of posts to get to it.
"Once" is scheduled to come to Kimball's Twin Peak theater beginning June 29.
posted by Bill Howard @ 1:13 PM
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