What does the success of an independent Irish movie about a busker and a young Czech flower seller who meet on the streets of Dublin and start to make music together, thereby changing each others lives forever, have to do with Melissa Etheridge? Apparently, a lot.

According to media reports, it was a chance meeting with the Academy Award winning musician at a Los Angeles restaurant a few days before the 2008 Academy Awards ceremony that lead to musician Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard’s surprise win in the Best Original song category for a beautiful ballad they had written for said movie. How’s that for a lucky charm, eh?

Academy Award winners Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in “Once”

Not that the two musicians would have needed that kind of help. Their success, and the success of the movie “Once” for which they wrote not only the award-winning “Falling Slowly”, but all of the songs besides also playing the leading roles, are well-deserved. Shot with a small budget of only € 130.000, the movie focuses on the two main characters, how they connect through their mutual love for music and thereby get to know, like and eventually love each other.

Even if they never act out their feelings, by the end of the movie, both of their lives have changed significantly, and – most likely – for the better. It’s a movie about how meeting the right person can make you look at your life and its options differently and eventually make you start to act. And it’s a movie about taking chances.

Because, like the movie poster says: “How often do you find the right person?”