Once

• It's a soulful valentine to music, friendship and the joys of honest hard graft, played out in the bedsits and recording studios of a deglamourised Dublin, and running to the kind of warm, easy rhythms that typified Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise.

• Subtle and unpredictable. Funny, musical, and dramatic. Once, set against the hazy atmosphere of Dublin, shuns all commonplaces and offers us a tender love story that strangely captivates and masterfully lays bare the reality of a relationship's first stage.

• A great little film, gentle yet profound, melancholic yet joyful. A great little love story told through the expressive power of music. Few words, deep feeling, immense understanding and, in the end, a single, painful yet understandable responsible choice. Absolutely a must-see (and must-listen)!

• Once is one of those movies that seems almost impossible to manufacture. It has no grand artifices, feels no need to underline every emotion, and never tries to seem important. It simply happens. Two people cross paths, talk, sing, listen to each other, and suddenly the film finds a truth that many far more ambitious stories never achieve. It is small only on the surface; inside, it is enormous.

• A story of a man and a woman meeting on the streets of Dublin. It seems not to be a simple love story, yet at the same time feels like a deeply authentic one. Wishing for the other's happiness and offering the most sincere part of oneself. I find myself rewatching it time and again just to witness the choice the protagonist makes in the end. A film like a cherished landscape of the heart, one you hesitate to recommend too casually.

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