Our Soulmate Singing

Rating: Null/10 (27 December 2007)

Here's a remarkable project. Its poorly made, with much of the incoherent elements hiding behind its presentation as homemade.
It has nonprofessional; actors and it shows. It has catchy songs that by themselves are forgettable. The girl isn't very appealing. It mixes elements from love stories that are extremely formulaic with those that are not, and the actors never understand where they are supposed to be in this. Theoretically its a mess.
But it works, and it works so well that I want to recommend it to you. Its almost the perfect date movie because instead of vicariously seeing the "happy ever after" ending and going back to your imperfect relationship, you know you would end your own movie differently.
And the imperfections work, because the tone between the world of the movie and the movie is folded perfectly. It isn't that the movie is close to reality, no.
There are elements that are real. The boy and girl are indeed friends, songwriting friends. Dublin does exist, or did. They did write what they sing. The story is about a ragtag experience of making a song that works out, the same as the ragtag making of the movie.
The songs really do weave into the story, no deeper. Usually it is the story that the songs compliment. Here, the whole world of the story is in the songs, their tone and their sharing. Its the sharing that matters here, and it transcends everything else in the movie that may distract us.
These two are soulmates. They were made for each other. They are meant to be together. We see it more than even they do, and that's the reason why this works so well.
Usually in romantic movies, we are bludgeoned with the romance. Here, we are simply exposed to the result of the coupling, and we invent the romance ourselves. What we invent around those songs and copious open space is far deeper than anything that could be shown.
The end is a bit perfect for this, because they both go back to prior romantic commitments and we know it is wrong. We force ourselves out of the movie and endorse the soulmatedness of the thing. In previous comments, I've remarked on the power of folding in storytelling. Here its perfect and complex, and I suspect largely unintended. That's because if you watch the DVD extras you'll see how the director stumbles about. I can only assume the producers were the ones with the intuition that matters.
So avoid those extras if you can. But one piece of trivia is a must. You must look it up in IMDb to know what she says in Czech to him. Its the whole film, hidden.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.