The Swell Season Movie

Sure, The Swell Season made big headlines when they won the Oscar for Best Song at the 2008 Academy Awards, but the public’s fascination with Marketa Irgolva and Glen Hansard‘s May-December relationship created a mini-tabloid bonanza. The Swell Season Movie, which screens this afternoon (Apr 29) as part of the Tribeca Film Festival, documents Glen and Mar’s very public romance and the grueling two-year world tour that ultimately splits them apart.

View the trailer for The Swell Season Movie after the jump.

After starring in the indie hit Once in 2007 and winning the Academy Award® for best original song (“Falling Slowly”), folk rock musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova won over audiences and skyrocketed to fame. For them life seemed to imitate art—the onscreen relationship was closely intertwined in both fact and fiction. But when they got back to post-Oscar® reality, Hansard, 35, and Irglova, only 18 years old, decided to dive in and ride the wave of newfound popularity by heading on tour.

This subtle and mesmerizing black-and-white music documentary bears witness to the band and the couple, from musical numbers that pleasure the ears and vibrate the screen to quiet moments where body language and silent pauses linger with foreboding heartbreak. It has always been apparent that the modest duo has a special connection musically, but when the offstage relationship doesn’t run as smoothly, it raises real questions about the future. Newcomer directors Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins, and Carlo Mirabella-Davis weave an intelligent and poignant tale with universal themes of love and expectations faithfully imbued with the magic and honesty of Hansard and Irglova’s music.
–Genna Terranova [Tribeca Film Festival]