"Once," Irish writer-director John Carney's fourth feature, was a hit at Sundance, and all the American kids have been packing their blogs with requests that this low budget, limited engagement film make its way from Albany to Albuquerque. It's touted as a romantic, musical drama with no special effects, costume changes or credible "actors." I viewed this movie the way I do all Irish movies, like I do my Irish family, with distance, and with a hardened, critical eye. And I suppose, a little bit of love.

As a hardened Irish ex pat NYer, I have no patience for Irish sentimentality, as it has done our national identity more damage than good. So what was it about this seemingly "simple" little film that struck a chord, that made even yours truly shed an authentic tear or tear or two?

The main characters are musicians, "The Guy" (Glen Hansard from the genius Dublin band The Frames) and "The Girl" the young unknown Czeck actress Marketa Irglova. They meet on a Dublin Street (probably Grafton from the looks of it) while the guy is busking for change. The girl, a classically trained, poor immigrant, takes interest in his tunes and they go on, over the period of a week, to collaborate on an album that is so good, it makes the most jaded of Dublin studio engineers sit up and take notice.

These two main charters are nameless in the film; as a result, we supplement that crucial part of their identity with our own. Who among us has not been lonely or suffered for love? "The guy" lives with his old Dad, and helps out at his Hoover repair shop, but he is about to leave for London, a historic place of Irish immigration, to pursue his wayward girlfriend, while the Czech girl lives with her mother and her daughter in a historic Georgian building, a sparse affair, set up for temporary immigrant families. Whereas "The Guy's" life, seems somewhat at the end of a cultural identity, "The Girl's" is just beginning, steeped in poverty and endless possibility.

"Once" is a musical. For all its "realism," the most memorable scene is with "the girl" going out in the middle of the night to buy batteries for her borrowed CD player in her pajamas, house-coat, and slippers, while singing a song she wrote in collaboration with her new friend.

Once is a beautiful film. The songs, " If You Want Me," "When Your Mind's Made Up," and "Falling Slowly" will haunt you in the same way as the face of a stranger does sometimes: So close and yet...