Nine years and two more films after Once, it’s appropriate now more than ever to admit something – John Carney is making a career off making the same film. His micro-budget almost-romance of failing musicians that was peppered with painfully yearning songs filmed in Dublin music stores and street corners (Once) became a bigger budget non-romance of a struggling musician and drunkard record executive finding a second chance in an album recorded on the streets of New York City (Begin Again), which has now become another almost-romance set on the streets of Dublin and to the pure sounds of music unfolding in the heat of the moment. Did I make this sound like an issue? Apologies if I did. Carney’s tendency to revisit the same concept of struggling creatives meeting and getting lost in the music and each other for a beautiful moment in time would be tedious if they didn’t get the two crucial ingredients of making the film fresh so very right – the people and the music.

Continue reading “In Sing Street, the moment seizes us”