The Guy is a busker who plays what people want to hear during the day, but plays the music of his soul in the empty streets at night. The Girl is a young immigrant mother selling flowers or magazines to passers-by. They both have lives that are struggles. They both have lives that aren’t quite fulfilled. They both have relationships that are in the past. Can they come together to create something new?

Once is pretty minimalist. The main characters are only known as Guy and Girl. Only a few characters actually have names that are used. The camera work and lighting seem Dogme-esque at times. The story is not all that complicated—boy meets girl, they work together on a project, they form a bond.

But what pushes this film beyond the simplicity with which it is made is a wonderful sense of passion that is made known in the music that is created by the Guy and Girl. Both characters have a love for music. That is what leads the Guy into the streets with his battered guitar. It’s not the money; it’s the yearning to share what is in his heart. The Girl is a pianist, but has no piano, and can’t afford one in Dublin. So she goes to a music store every day just to play on one of the floor pianos.

As they discover this common passion, they create a symbiosis that makes them more than either of them could be separately. As they sing each other’s songs, the harmony is not overwhelming, but the perfect complement that makes what the other is doing whole.

In a lesser film all this would have led to an inevitable romantic relationship. The passion of their music would have been converted into torrid lovemaking. And while all the elements are present to allow the characters to go down that road, this film never takes the obvious route, just as the Guy’s songs always have a little bit of a surprising jump to a high note or a bit of a pause.

Instead of the Guy and the Girl being drawn into a romantic relationship, the passion they unleash in each other through the music leads to their abilities for finding their old passions. The songs they write are love songs not for each other, but for those that they have loved before and still love.

Glen Hansard of the Irish band The Frames is the Guy. His musical collaborator, Markéta Irglová, is the Girl. Although Hansard was in the film The Commitments, these are not veteran actors. They are able to pull from their own experience to make these characters both believable and attractive.

But the real driving force of the film is the music. Hansard and Irglová are indeed gifted in their writing and singing. The music isn’t here as background to manipulate emotions as a film score does, nor is it just the dialogue set to music as in a traditional musical. Rather the songs are our window to look deep within the characters and their struggle with life.

This is a story about finding fulfillment. We all have passions that we struggle to fulfill. Often we allow circumstances to conquer us. But what if we had the chance to find a way to overcome those obstacles? What if we met someone who could heal us and make us whole so we could move on? The lives we touch and that touch us often can open the ways for our passions to be fulfilled.