A Love Song

Like silent meditation, “A Love Song” isn’t for everyone. The movie requires its audience to both remain still and stay engaged. Those are skills many directors no longer value, so they’re skills many moviegoers no longer possess. But for those who will do the work, “A Love Song” is a special film that will stay with you long after the clamor of real life rushes back in around you.

It’s all supremely touching and evocative without ever feeling too on-the-nose or heavy-handed.

Dickey and Studi are magnetic on-screen, oscillating between the easy chemistry of old friends, and the awkwardness of strangers.

A Love Song has the narrative economy and the sneaky emotional power of a well-crafted short story, plus a feel for isolation and rootlessness that harks back to some of the great drifter portraits of American independent cinema. It’s a testament to the lyricism that Walker-Silverman conjures here that I sometimes wished he would slow his narrative roll even further, immersing us even more deeply in the story’s quotidian rhythms.

It is beautiful, quiet, tender, and borne aloft by that rejection of the idea of hopelessness. You don't have to believe in one particular romance, it whispers, to still believe in romance.

A Love Song is rough around the edges, but between its gorgeously crafted world and Dickey's ability to ground the film with a single expression, the flaws fade away when the finer elements sing together in harmony.

Both Dickey and Studi shoulder the lesser material through a charming naturalism that papers over the script’s artificiality.