just watch it!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Sam (Rupert Friend) is a troubled jazz musician who has stopped singing after a devastating lost. He runs a failing bookstore and lives in an old hotel run by George (Forest Whitaker). He befriends kids who walk in thru his ground floor window. His life changes when Pi (Clémence Poésy) breaks into his room and locks herself in his bathroom. She refuses to show her face as they both recover from personal heartbreaks.There are great bits. I love Poésy and I don't mind Friend at all. The split screen of them on opposite sides of the door is great. They are good together. His musical ride into hip hop could have been very awkward but it actually works. Other than the character growth, the plot doesn't have much drive. It's like her pi tattoo where it has no ending and they dot dot dot it to put in a finale. It needs more in terms of plot writing and a bit more dialogue writing which could launch this romance into the atmospheres. It has a calm loving charm but the drama isn't there.

.... colors and music!What a kewl film! There is plenty of excellent jazz and melody throughout this story. The set coloration's are wonderfully moody and create the perfect tone for this semi-dramatic romantic love story.Rupert Friend and Clémence Poésy give an outstanding performance as Sam & Pi. Set in an old hotel, a jazz bar, and a strange book & vinyl record shop Sam & Pi discover their love and resolve their individual wounds from just living. Pi creates the visual art that Sam creates with his music and song.This movie has its own personality so do not expect a sweet Hollywood story. Here you will see and hear art.A bravo from me!

I guess I'm a snob when it comes to Canadian movies - I just assume they will be kinda crappy and low budget and disappointing.I really enjoyed this movie. It didn't give me any of that 'Canadian' vibe. It was really well written and not like so many movies that are just like everything else you've seen.The characters are real and you care about them. I was pleasantly pulled into this movie and got lost in the story, unlike many of your more shallow Hollywood fare.This movie is worth your time.If you're looking for a creative artistic movie that isn't your standard stupid mainstream junk, then this is for you.

Basically, this is a movie that for all intents and purposes, doesn't quite exist. I don't remember having heard anything about the movie, but came across it by accident while flipping through the movie listings on TV. And that is a shame! Okay, it hasn't gone completely unnoticed, as the tumblr blog people have an extensive post about it.Synopsis: young brilliant musician goes into a deep depression with the death of his wife and stops music. Instead he spends his time in the hotel room where he first met her, waiting for her to call. A young woman, who doesn't want him to see her face and who lost several years of her youth to being in a coma, forms a friendship with him through the bathroom door. And, like magic, and with the help of the kindly chess playing hotel desk man, the two eccentric people tentatively and quirkily begin to live. He, again, she for the first time. And it is the quirkiness that I can see being a thumbs down for some. Why? I've been struggling to articulate my thoughts, but it comes to what may be an odd split in the human population between those who delight in Magical Realism versus those who delight in cartoon violence or the un-magical realism of saccharine sentimental (happy / sad) movies. The emotional life of the characters is brought forward in the storytelling through exaggerated setting and character. So the young woman struggling to find her place in the world hides in the bathroom of the man having lost his place. Each have erected a wall between themselves and the world which, by the magic of life, is embodied in the locked bathroom door.And thus we see a visual metaphor dance around the theme of finding/losing/rediscovering one's voice. The metaphor is re-enforced with the subplot of the young musician who has to struggle to keep his own musical voice while it is being excoriated by the good-intentioned father. And, in the best of a magical realism typical of many Canadian writers, such as Barbara Gowdy and Margaret Atwood, the theme is explored in different ways. The young woman begins to find her voice using mute media: she uses film frames clipped from the movies she's paid by a theatre company to project and, with a kind of homage to Timothy Findley's novel Famous Last Words, journal writing on the wall of her loft that she would paint over until the day she met Sam.This is a fun movie. The directing kept it light, and the performances by the leads are engaging and don't fall into maudlin sentimentality. Forest Whitaker as their unassuming spiritual guide was perfect in the role. The filmography is good and contributes to the story with its own subtle quirkiness. And the music is also excellent. As is noted, Charlie Winston contributes perfectly to the sound track, including Rupert Friend's extemporaneous blues/jazz 'hit' I'm in Love With a Bathroom.Post Review: This movie participated in a delightful little synchronicity that, for the curious can be found at egajd.blogspot.com