love song movie review

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While it doesn’t have any CGI effects (or stirring orchestral music for that matter) to signal this, “A Love Song,” the debut feature from Max Walker-Silverman , takes place in a storybook America. That is, an America in which threat and menace are absent, where folks get along in an easy, considered, practically loping kind of way. Colorado-set, in the middle of a very sparsely populated and largely sere campground, it posits a life of few means and simple pleasures, a life that reveals a thoroughly bittersweet nature as time goes by. 

We see its central character, Faye, from behind for the first few minutes. She emerges from a modest trailer hitched to a pickup truck to go grab a basket that’s caught a few crawfish in the lake nearby. She turns on an old transistor radio—Longines Symphonette logo still intact—and twists the dial. (Usually a well-curated bit of Americana emerges.) Dale Dickey , the veteran character actor who plays the role, has a thoroughly-lined face that speaks of hard years behind it. 

Faye goes through her day with patience, but it’s clear she’s waiting on someone or something. Opening a calendar, she closes her eyes, circles above it with a magic marker, and when she puts it down on a particular date, she writes in its square “Today.”

In a bit, a little girl with a quarter of cowhands in tow stops by, asking if Faye can move her trailer. Seems that her family’s patriarch is buried somewhere thereabout, and they’d like to dig him up and re-bury him somewhere where the view doesn’t include a newly set-up oil rig, the only visible blot on the landscape. Faye politely says she’s waiting on a visitor who’s coming to this exact spot. The group accepts this and is pleasantly on its way.

Faye also accepts a dinner invitation from a couple, played by Benja K. Thomas and Michelle Wilson , who have Faye over at their nearby campsite and regale her with the story of their consistently postponed engagement, which was to have been proposed a couple of national parks ago on their road trip. Faye clearly envies the couple’s alliance.

Just as Faye is preparing to hit the road, “Today” happens. In the person of Lito, played by Wes Studi . He’s about as garrulous a person as Faye, which is to say, not at all. Nevertheless, their warm but terse conversations fill in bits of their backstory and reveal Faye as having recently been widowed. Lito and Faye go way back—they reminisce about grade school adventures—but it’s not clear if they were ever lovers. This appointment, apparently, was made with a perhaps tacit understanding that the possibility would be explored.

They fall into an almost immediately comfortable exchange, largely through music. Faye explains her radio to Lito: wherever you twist the dial to, where you land, it’ll be playing the perfect song. With his electric guitar, Lito teaches Faye the Michael Hurley song “Be Kind to Me,” and subsequent scenes depict the couple living out that song, along with Lito’s quiet, friendly dog.

And ... that’s kind of it. “A Love Song” is a companionable movie to sit through. It’s well-photographed, unobtrusively edited, full of wondrous sights, and acted by a couple of masters of warm underplaying. One of its final lines is “We’re going to be okay,” and the movie seems to believe this can be true, if we have the wherewithal to live lives as uncomplicated at Lito and Faye do. I’m not sure I myself believe that anymore. If I did, I might have been more moved by this thoroughly decent picture. 

Now playing in select theaters.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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A Love Song (2022)

Rated PG for mild thematic elements.

Dale Dickey as Faye

Wes Studi as Lito

Michelle Wilson as Jan

Benja K. Thomas as Marie

John Way as Postman Sam

Marty Grace Dennis as Dice

• Max Walker-Silverman

Cinematographer

• Alfonso Herrera Salcedo
• Affonso Gonçalves
• Ramzi Bashour

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‘A Love Song’ Review: When Moving Forward Means Looking Back

Two former childhood friends rekindle their connection in this sweetly hopeful story of romantic longing.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

Framed by soaring mountains and a gleaming lake somewhere in Southwestern Colorado, a woman (Dale Dickey), wiry and weathered, catches crayfish and waits in her small camper for a special someone to arrive. The woman is Faye and, like Lito (Wes Studi), the childhood friend she hopes will respond to her invitation, she is long widowed. Maybe he, too, is ready for some company.

Slow, sweet and subdued, “A Love Song,” Max Walker-Silverman’s lovely first feature, is about late-life longing and needs that never completely go away. Building solid characters from mere scraps of information (Faye was once a bush pilot, Lito a musician), the two leads embrace a screenplay (by the director) filled with long silences and searching close-ups. Plaintive country songs leak from Faye’s transistor radio as she studies bird species by day and the constellations by night — scenes that tell us this is not someone who is simply existing. She’s living and learning.

From time to time, diverting visitors wander into Faye’s campsite — friendly neighbors with a dinner invitation, Indigenous cowhands with an unusual request — their whimsical intrusions adding flavor to an unyieldingly spare story. We soon appreciate, though, that more than one kind of love is being celebrated in that title, including the director’s affection for his home state, its wide-open spaces and wandering souls. In Faye and Lito, Walker-Silverman is honoring a certain kind of Western archetype, resilient and unsinkable and untethered. This hardiness is echoed in the simplicity of Faye’s diet and daily routines, as much as in Alfonso Herrera Salcedo’s patient shots of flowering plants punching through parched earth.

Some of those flowers will be picked and proffered, ice cream will be eaten and remembrances shared before this gentle movie rests in the poignancy of a mourning dove’s call. What lingers, though, is a warmth that’s probably due, at least in part, to the director’s decision to surround himself with people he loves. (The cowhands are played by his four closest friends, and his former roommate, Ramzi Bashour, composed the film’s score.) The result is a tender, laconic look at a woman who rarely faces anything in life, including loneliness, without a strategy.

“There’s days and there’s nights, and I got a book for each,” she tells Lito, a declaration more heartbreaking than any monologue of lost love.

A Love Song Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 21 minutes. In theaters.

Review: ‘A Love Song’ gives Dale Dickey the long-overdue role of her career

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For nearly all of “A Love Song’s” 81 minutes, we are in the presence of Faye, a 60-something widow camping in the mountains of southwestern Colorado. She’s good company, even when not much seems to be happening, which is much of the time. For Faye, home is a small camper van with cheery orange curtains in the windows. For food, she catches crawdads from a nearby lake and boils them on a faltering gas stove. For entertainment, she has birdsong in the morning and stars in the evening, plus an old portable radio that, whatever the time of day, can be counted on to supply the perfect mood-appropriate tune.

Max Walker-Silverman, who wrote and directed this lovely first feature, familiarizes us with Faye’s daily routine before he even gives us a good look at her face. There’s a reason he waits a beat: It’s an extraordinary face, and this movie, which is partly about making the most of one’s resources, knows better than to take it for granted. It belongs to Dale Dickey, a superb character actor who has often been deployed — in settings ranging from the eastern Kentucky of “Justified” to the Missouri Ozarks of “Winter’s Bone” — as a signifier of regional authenticity. With her thin blade of a mouth, her hard, penetrating stare and her startling emotional ferocity, she can seem, in stature and spirit, as elemental as the landscape itself.

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“A Love Song” avails itself of Dickey’s usual strengths, even as it vaults her, in a belated but entirely welcome development, from sterling supporting player to luminous lead. And Dickey, in a performance of few words and zero histrionics, nonetheless unleashes an astonishing range of emotions. An appraising glance at the terrain can turn suitably awestruck; a moment’s fondly remembered pleasure can give way to piercing regret. Within the space of a close-up (the film was shot by Alfonso Herrera Salcedo), the sorrowful gleam in Faye’s eyes and the lines etched in her brow tell a moving and eloquent story, even before the movie itself makes some of that story explicit.

It accomplishes this, a bit too conveniently, with the help of a few peripheral characters — a road-tripping couple (Michelle Wilson and Benja K. Thomas), a family of neighboring cowhands — who turn up at Faye’s door and tease out some of her backstory. Seven years have passed since the death of Faye’s husband, a tragedy that has brought her to this sun-baked Colorado campground. You might be reminded of “Nomadland,” but unlike Frances McDormand’s grieving widow in that movie, Faye doesn’t appear to have ventured too far from home.

She’s waiting, we soon learn, for someone she grew up with years ago nearby, either an old flame or a childhood sweetheart. She has no idea what to expect (“I don’t even know what he looks like anymore,” she murmurs), or when he might show up; a wall calendar indicates that it’s the year 2020, but Faye has no computer or phone. And so she sits and waits, for a postal worker (John Way) who stops by regularly with friendly chatter but no letters, and for a second chance at love that may never materialize.

It will materialize in due course. That’s no more of a spoiler, really, than the names of the constellations that Faye identifies in the night sky, or the titles of the songs pouring from her radio. (They include Taj Mahal’s “Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes,” Dick Flood’s “The Man Who Walks Alone” and Blaze Foley’s “The Way You Smile.”) I suppose I could leave undisclosed the fact that Faye’s old acquaintance is played by Wes Studi, though only at the risk of underselling the movie. His character, named Lito, shows up with a bouquet of wildflowers, a friendly dog, a hopeful smile and, it soon becomes clear, his own history of love and loss. As their characters bask in the sunshine and enjoy a tentative, wistful reunion — an emotional duet that turns wonderfully literal once the guitars come out — something almost mythological seems to rumble in the background, as if the land itself were quietly shifting beneath their feet.

Both characters, and both actors, are perfectly matched, and not just because Studi is a screen presence as evocative of the American West as Dickey’s is of the American South. The bittersweet wisdom of “A Love Song” is that perfection can and perhaps must be fleeting, as all beautiful things are: those songs, those flowers and certainly the ice cream cones that Faye and Lito enjoy together in the movie’s sweetest scene. What these two need from each other, after close to a lifetime apart, may last no more than a moment, an hour or an evening. It may also be too specific and achingly personal to convey in words, though it’s not too personal for us to recognize.

“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. As it is, there’s a brisk comic snap to the editing (by the director and Affonso Gonçalves), which often cuts rapidly between faces and objects within a scene, and an occasional over-reliance on arch, symmetrically framed sight gags. They bring a smile to your face, but they also impose an artificial sense of order that is happily dissolved by Dickey’s performance, so rough-hewn in its beauty and so evocative of a life lived outside the lines.

‘A Love Song’

Rated: PG, for mild thematic elements Running time: 1 hour, 21 minutes Playing: Starts July 29 at AMC the Grove 14, Los Angeles, and AMC Century City 15

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‘a love song’: film review | sundance 2022.

Dale Dickey and Wes Studi play childhood sweethearts who meet up for a night at a Southwest Colorado campsite in Max Walker-Silverman's debut feature.

By Jon Frosch

Senior Editor, Reviews

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A hushed little heartbreaker about loneliness and longing in the American West, A Love Song is bound to be characterized as a sort of mini- Nomadland .

It wouldn’t be an entirely unfounded comparison. Starring formidable character actress Dale Dickey in a rare lead role as Faye, a 60ish woman living off the grid and reconnecting, for a night, with a former flame (Wes Studi), Max Walker-Silverman’s feature debut is decidedly smaller-scale than Chloé Zhao’s 2020 Oscar winner. It doesn’t have that film’s sweep, its distinct political undertones or its romanticism when it comes to American independence and wanderlust. What the two movies do share is a clear-eyed, compassionate attention to roving female protagonists, as well as themes of aging, grief and the sustaining beauty of nature.

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Sundance reveals six cities vying to become fest's home in 2027 and beyond (including park city), saoirse ronan's 'the outrun' gets sony pictures classics release, a love song.

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (NEXT) Writer-director: Max Walker-Silverman Cast: Dale Dickey, Wes Studi, Michelle Wilson, Benja K. Thomas, John Way, Marty Grace Dennis

But whereas Nomadland ’s Fern (Frances McDormand) balked at settling down with a suitor (David Strathairn) — holding fast to her self-sufficiency, her mobility and the memory of her dead husband — Faye all but trembles with yearning for companionship and connection.

In that bone-deep melancholy, and in the broad outlines of its story, A Love Song may also call to mind other screen portraits of people subsisting along the frayed margins of society, including Robin Wright’s recent Land and works from indie auteurs Debra Granik and Kelly Reichardt . If the film doesn’t exactly transcend its familiarity (the elegiac tone, the sun-baked, wind-swept scenery, the wistful acoustic guitar score), it succeeds, often with understated magnificence, in finding ways to sidestep it — to make you not mind in the slightest.

That’s thanks in large part to the wonderful central duo, the indelibly expressive texture of their faces and timbre of their voices. They give the movie spark and feeling, as do the seamless sense of place, gorgeous country-folk-blues-rock soundtrack and gentle absurdist flourishes that suggest influences from Jim Jarmusch and Gus Van Sant to the Coen brothers at their least caustic and Wes Anderson at his least arch. With its unflashy confidence and finely calibrated emotion, A Love Song leaves you excited to see what the writer-director does next, perhaps in less charted territory.

When we meet Faye, she’s set up in her trailer at a lakeside Colorado campsite. The film’s opening minutes efficiently establish her routine: catching and boiling crawfish for meals, listening to music on her transistor radio, memorizing bird sounds and constellations with the help of Audubon guides, and taking in the splendor of the water and mountains while sipping from a can of beer or cup of coffee.

Though Faye’s calendar tells us it’s 2020, there’s no cellphone or laptop in sight. Wisely, the film never tries to convince us as to whether this is a sign of freedom or isolation, empowerment or apathy. But it soon becomes clear that Faye is waiting for someone: Each time a friendly courier (John Way) passes — accompanied by a horse with bins of mail strapped to his back — Faye perks up expectantly.

One day, just when Faye is ready to pack it in and move on, Lito (Studi) arrives with his dog and a bouquet of wildflowers. Bits of backstory emerge from their haltingly tender initial conversations: Faye and Lito grew up together in the area and were friends throughout school; her beloved husband died seven years ago; he, too, was happily married and is now widowed. They haven’t seen each other in decades, but recently made plans to meet at this very campsite. Here they are.

What transpires over the next hour isn’t particularly unexpected or dramatic. Words are exchanged, though not many (think of Lito and Faye as the anti-Jesse-and-Celine from Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy). Food and drink are shared, music played. There’s a kiss that feels more like an unburdening, a mutual recognition of a common pain, than anything erotic. But the intimacy between these characters is quietly soul-stirring. We sense that beneath the spareness of their phrases and gestures, this night is shifting their insides and shuffling their perspectives; choices once made are being reconsidered, second chances contemplated.

Dickey can project pure fearsomeness (who could forget her smashing Jennifer Lawrence in the head with a mug in Winter’s Bone ?), the pale blue twinkle of her eyes freezing into a cruel gaze. But here, that gloriously grooved face softens, filling with childlike excitement, then disappointment and, in one shattering shot near the end, utter despondency. She and Studi, exuding an effortless blend of decency, mischief and sorrow, layer their performances with tiny but telling details: the girlish giggle that escapes Faye when Lito takes a photo of her; his grin, somewhere between teasing and bashful, or the way his voice trails off at the end of certain sentences. I could have watched these two awkwardly assemble, then savor, ice cream cones or sing and strum along in an impromptu duet of Michael Hurley’s “Be Kind to Me” 10 times over.

But leaving you wanting more is preferable to the alternative, and A Love Song ’s minimalism — its refusal to pad the story with excess sentiment or didacticism (an indirect reference to climate change is apt and discreet) — is a strength. Walker-Silverman, working with DP Alfonso Herrera Salcedo, mixes up the movie’s naturalism with flashes of more stylized visual humor — deadpan compositions, a smash cut here, a whip pan there. And he makes judicious use of close-ups, filling the frame with his leads but also pulling back to place them in context, whether it’s the tight vintage interior of Faye’s camper or the golden-hued scenery that surrounds it. They may be solitary figures, the filmmaker seems to be insisting, but Faye and Lito are too engaged with the world — in particular, this land they love — to be alone.

Per American-road-movie tradition, music plays a key role here, the songs drifting out from Faye’s radio (gems like Taj Mahal’s “Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes,” Elizabeth Cotten’s “Shake Sugaree” and Valerie June’s “Slip Slide on By”) in a kind of recurring dialogue with her thoughts and desires. The tunes keep her going, even as death hovers at close range via recollections of deceased spouses and relatives, as well as a family of courtly cowhands looking to dig up a relative buried under Faye’s trailer.

The latter belong to a gallery of oddball peripheral characters — including the cheerful mailman and a chatty lesbian couple (Michelle Wilson and Benja K. Thomas) — who lighten the mood, keeping our protagonist grounded in the present and offering her glimmers of faith in the future. They weave a small but vital web of kindness and community around Faye, reminding her, as Lito’s visit does, that needing other people is part of being alive.

Full credits

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (NEXT) Production companies: Cow Hip Films, Present Company, Fit Via Vi Film Productions, MatPac Entertainment Writer-director: Max Walker-Silverman Cast: Dale Dickey, Wes Studi, Michelle Wilson, Benja K. Thomas, John Way, Marty Grace Dennis Producers: Dan Janvey, Jesse Hope, Max Walker-Silverman Executive producers: Jan McAdoo, Jack McAdoo, Bill Way Director of photography: Alfonso Herrera Salcedo Production designer: Juliana Barreto Barreto Costume designer: Stine Dahlman Editors: Max Walker-Silverman, Alfonso Gonçalves Music: Ramzi Bashour

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A Love Song Reviews

A Love Song does what it says on the tin and presents a film that is stripped back and honest. For his first feature film, Max Walker-Silverman shows a lot of strength in capturing tone, heart, and using key filmmaking techniques...

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Mar 1, 2024

A Love Song is a well-told, beautifully written movie that is a cinematic masterpiece of love and wonder that quietly whispers monologues of love, life, and grief.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2023

A Love Song is a quiet, subdued, force of nature.

Full Review | Aug 6, 2023

Not unlike its two central characters, A Love Song speaks softly and honestly and without hyperbolic drama, making this little slice of senior romance a thought-provoking delight.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Even then A Love Song is the most tender love story I have seen in recent times. It is a film that suddenly sneaks up on you, reminding you of someone you have not been able to forget.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2023

A quiet rumination on finding connection and beauty in the smallest of things, this is a film that celebrates the sadness of life and finds hope in it.

Full Review | Dec 17, 2022

The landscape has a certain gaunt beauty and so does Dickey’s performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 7, 2022

Too bad that the staging never deviates from the marked path, and the film doesn’t pass the barrier of conventionality.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 7, 2022

There’s magic and nostalgia for old-fashioned love stories in Walker-Silverman’s script, but these veteran actors don’t bend to sentiment. Both know how to blend innocence with renewal, reimagining coming-of-age as they do.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 26, 2022

A promising debut by Max Walker-Silverman who like so many successful filmmakers sticks to stories from his own backyard. Dale Dickey and Wes Studi give us a glimpse of their range with two of the most memorable performances of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 5, 2022

...Dale Dickey and Wes Studi. The two Hollywood veterans of film and television showcase many layers in their nuanced performances, demonstrating that they are Zen masters at creating authentic characters.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 22, 2022

A Love Song is a very low-key treasure of a movie that has as much to say in its long silences as it does in authentic-sounding dialogue between two would-be lovers who reunite after not seeing each other for decades.

Full Review | Aug 20, 2022

This nice and hopeful little film comes from director Max Walker-Silverman, who won't mind a shout out for cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo somehow situating landscapes and gorgeous skies to become perfect co-stars for the always memorable Dickey.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 20, 2022

What “A Love Song” lacks in traditional momentum it makes up for with the texture of entire lives being contemplated, even as they’re not explicitly divulged.

The chemistry between Dickey and Studi always palpable and subtly moving.

Full Review | Original Score: 88/100 | Aug 19, 2022

This is really Dale Dickey's movie. A real sleeper made with a light touch and a warm heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 19, 2022

More akin to a short story than a novel, the movie is a mere 81 minutes, but in every dusty frame, it features some of 2022′s finest acting.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 18, 2022

"Sweet-tempered atmosphere rich in lonely wistfulness, against the backdrop of a pleasant, low-fi, slightly eccentric version of American West."

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Aug 17, 2022

The great Dale Dickey, who's made a career playing hard-edged, dangerous women, finally gets a chance to shine in a romance -- albeit a bittersweet one about regret and loss.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 17, 2022

With “A Love Song” Max Walker-Silverman has given us a delicate, honest, and soulful study of loss, loneliness, and navigating grief.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 16, 2022

‘A Love Song’ Review: Dale Dickey Glows in This Tiny, Tender Sundance Discovery

With a face that tells its own stories, the weathered character actor is the perfect choice to play a woman who hasn't given up on romance.

By Peter Debruge

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The same day faded-romance drama “ A Love Song ” screened for the Sundance Film Festival , I caught an interview with Marilyn Bergman on NPR in which the late lyricist described the time director Richard Brooks came to her and partner Alan with a request: “I want you to write me a song that is to appear twice in [“The Happy Ending”]. Early in the film, I want it to function perhaps as a proposal of marriage between these two young lovers,” he said to them. “l don’t want you to change a note or a word, but I want the song to mean something very different when you hear it a second time,” Brooks told the couple, who answered the assignment with the ballad “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”

There’s a love song in “A Love Song” that functions in much the same way. It goes unheard until the very last scene, but in a way, it echoes all that has come before — the longing, the regret, the feelings two lovers couldn’t put into words. The tune is a contemporary one, but it sounds like a classic, as if it’s been waiting in the radio for this very moment, paying off an intimate conversation from earlier in the film, when a widow named Faye ( Dale Dickey ) sat with an old friend from childhood, Lito (Wes Studi), and said, “Give that dial a swirl. Always plays the perfect song, even if in the moment, you ain’t sure why.”

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Over the course of the film — a spare, unfussy indie of the Kelly Reichardt ilk, conceived by Colorado native Max Walker-Silverman — audiences spend a fair amount of time with Faye, most of it alone. She’s driven her trailer to an out-of-the-way campground and parked it beside a fishing hole, where it’s easy to catch Rocky Mountain lobsters and cook them up fresh.

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By day, Faye listens to the birdsong around her. At night, she looks to the stars in the clear sky above. But mostly, Faye waits. We can sense the nervous excitement anytime someone approaches. It’s there in the way she adjusts her shirt and touches her hair before opening the door. She’s not young, no longer beautiful, and yet, it’s near-impossible not to love her.

A character actor with more than 125 credits to her name, Dale Dickey is perhaps best recognized for playing worse-for-wear junkies and hillbillies in film and TV (her credits include “Winter’s Bone,” “True Blood” and “My Name Is Earl”). You might not know her name, but she has a face you don’t forget — a face that tells stories no cover girl can. Newcomer Walker-Silverman recognizes that, casting Dickey in a rare leading role: a woman whose past is written mostly in wrinkles, rather than dialogue. We learn that Faye was married once, that she flew planes for the forest service, that she still has feelings for Lito. She wrote him a letter, suggesting a reunion. Will he come? Will they recognize one another?

Without spoiling the fragile dance that ensues, it’s worth sharing that Lito, like the director, still sees the beauty in Faye. We don’t doubt his sincerity for a second. These two characters have both loved and lost, and in one another — in the idea of what they could have had — they seem to recognize the possibility of moving forward.

It’s uncommon to stumble upon a first-time director with a sensitivity to such feelings, but Walker-Silverman’s clearly a romantic. Though not much happens in his debut (plenty will find it downright boring), “A Love Song” should resonate with those who seek truth more than incident from their movies. There’s a tender vulnerability to the way Faye and Lito approach one another. But also a toughness.

It’s the combination of those two elements that makes this such a terrific role for Dickey, one that will remind many of Fern, the character Frances McDormand played in “Nomadland.” “A Love Song” isn’t as rich a film as that one, but it shares a similar sense of lyricism, finding in the Colorado wildflowers what Chloé Zhao sees in a sunset. Faye hasn’t rejected society the way Fern did, though she has no need for it either. In one scene, she opens a calendar, closes her eyes and picks a date at random, writing “TODAY” in the square. Surely Faye’s radio would tell her what day it really is, but the point seems to be that it doesn’t matter.

Faye receives several visitors while waiting for Lito, and there’s a courteous, slightly comical quality to these interactions. She greets each of them with a generous “howdy,” and does her best to be polite. A young girl who looks and sounds like she might have stepped out of a Wes Anderson movie rewards her with the gift of a canoe — “for recreation and romantic excursions,” she says. Faye’s life is a little short on both at the moment, but it will only take a knock and a question — “What are you doing the rest of your life?” perhaps — to make her heart sing.

Reviewed at Wilshire Screening Room, Jan. 14, 2022. In Sundance Film Festival (NEXT). Running time: 80 MIN.

• Production: A MacPac Entertainment, Fit Via Vi presentation of a Cow Hip Films, Present Company production, in association with The Sakana Foundation, Fierce Optimism Films. (World sales: Cinetic Media, New York.) Producers: Dan Janvey, Jesse Hope, Max Walker-Silverman. Executive producers: Jan McAdoo, Jack McAdoo, Bill Way. Co-producers: Sakurako Fisher, Robina Riccitiello, Josh Peters, Maggie Ambrose.
• Crew: Director, writer: Max Walker-Silverman. Camera: Alfonso Herrera Salcedo. Editors: Max Walker-Silverman, Affonso Gonçalves. Music: Ramzi Bashour.
• With: Dale Dickey, Michelle Wilson, Benia K. Thomas, Marty Grace Dennis, John Way, Wes Studi.

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‘A Love Song’ Film Review: Dale Dickey Delivers a Career-Best Performance in Transcendent Love Story

This review originally ran following the film’s world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

If a weathered heart still searching for tenderness in the twilight of life were a movie, it would be “A Love Song.” This miraculously radiant first feature from writer-director Max Walker-Silverman tells a Western romance amid constellations and birds, delayed letters and brief encounters, and the worthwhile sorrow of loving and yearning to be loved.

Placid in her self-sufficient lifestyle, lonely widow Faye (Dale Dickey) eagerly awaits the arrival of an important guest in the mountainous vastness of the Colorado terrain. On campsite seven, she catches shellfish for dinner and listens to her trusty radio, a battery-fueled portal to her emotional state that always plays a pertinent tune at the appropriate time.

With early shots of sturdy flowers, gorgeous in their bravery as they thrive on arid ground, Walker-Silverman makes a visual analogy to his leading lady’s gentle fortitude. On her face, time has carved a soul map from the joy and grief endured over decades, and now, sitting outside her camper, she hopes for the coda of her days on earth to involve companionship.

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Though virtually isolated, Faye does come into contact with those in the vicinity, each on their own affection-motivated quests: a polite young cowgirl (Marty Grace Dennis) and her painfully shy older brothers asking permission for a meaningful excavation, a personable postman (John Way), and a lesbian couple in which one of them fears commitment.

At times, the tone of these visits approximates that of Wes Anderson’s amusingly offbeat works in the eccentric quality of the supporting performances and their florid dialogue, as well as in how the camera behaves around them, such as the use of a knowing pan to accentuate a humorous exchange between Faye and the well-mannered siblings.

A character actress most recently memorable in rugged familial sagas “Winter’s Bone” and “Leave No Trace,” Dickey steps into a rare lead role, a showcase of hardwearing grace and the best of her decades-long career on screen. The perceived sternness of her previous roles is substituted in “A Love Song” by a measured openness to people and to the land.

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Dickey, a powerhouse of subtlety and restraint, takes the character from anticipation to resignation and ultimately to a life-affirming, unspoken epiphany. Faye shields her most fragile parts under an armor forged of solitude and heartbreak-laden song lyrics until her high-school crush Lito (Wes Studi), now a widower, appears at her doorstep.

Together again to reminisce on their tenth-grade escapades, perhaps to rekindle them for a twilight-years relationship, the two former classmates navigate this reunion, having lost their respective life partners, with caution and curiosity. In the ballad of Faye and Lito, the director undercuts sentimentality, preventing the soundtrack from soaring unchecked with the exception of Faye and Lito’s impromptu live performance of Michael Hurley’s “Be Kind to Me”

Studi matches Dickey’s unassuming sincerity, not only in that heartening musical duet but also in the comforting quietness of their confessions about what they’ve lost and what remains. Familiar as their presence in film and TV might be, to see these seasoned thespians do such resplendently subdued work is to rediscover them.

In each other’s company, the decades that distanced the characters, and the countless experiences they lived through separately, vanish momentarily in the childish delight of an ice-cream cone or in the way a candid photograph can reveal the essence of a person. What makes their outdoors rendezvous so endearing is the lack of judgment or any firm expectations of a forever after. What they see is what they get, however long it lasts.

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Walker-Silverman repeatedly associates the landscape with Faye’s human preoccupations. While she laments how the water level of the lake has decreased from what she remembers, or how perhaps sheep are no longer pastured in the nearby peaks like they were in her father’s day, she also seems to be longing for the simpler days of youth. Yet the narrative demonstrates that not all is lost: Faye’s inner glow, embodied in Dickey’s demure expressions, hasn’t eroded. She deserves to experience the ebullience of being alive again.

Thanks to the exuberant eye of cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo, who plays with natural light as it grazes Dickey’s skin and makes the water glisten, the picture brims with mutedly arresting imagery. A shot of Faye’s silhouette becoming one with the mountains under a star-spangled sky makes for one of the film’s most imposingly spiritual passages.

Comparisons to recent Oscar best picture winner “Nomadland” (both movies share producer Dan Janvey) will abound, but if “A Love Song” is similar to Chloé Zhao’s reimagining of the American west, it is in both films’ delicate touch in blending the grandeur of nature with the fragility of the unvarnished human condition.

More than just an auspicious debut, this is a young director’s succinct statement on the possibility of being enamored with the wonderment in the mundane. Walker-Silverman exhibits the sensibilities of a master storyteller, capable of making his splendid writing seem effortless in its construction and then molding it into warm magic via the cast’s remarkable talent. He’s an absolute revelation among emerging voices.

As exquisitely transcendent a film as 2022 will likely see, “A Love Song” is a cinematic rhapsody told in whispers of truth that confirms that love, for a lifetime or for a moment, merits the effort to be pursued in other people and in the overlooked wonders of existence.

“A Love Song” opens Friday in U.S. theaters.

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In A Love Song , Dale Dickey and Wes Studi Finally Take Center Stage

A woman waits by herself in a camper beside a lake surrounded by what seems like dry, empty land. By day, she reads an Audubon guide to birds; by evening, a guide to the stars — and it seems she’s been there a while, because she has memorized the birdcalls and the stars’ places in the night sky. The woman, named Faye and played by veteran character actress Dale Dickey ( Winter’s Bone , Unbelievable ), subsists on crawdads she has caught herself and listens to the radio. Every once in a while, a young man on a bike brings by the mail, and she becomes briefly excited that something might have arrived for campsite No. 7. Usually, nothing has.

Then, one day, someone arrives: Lito (played by Wes Studi), the man she has been waiting for. They’ve known each other since they were kids but haven’t seen each other in ages. Not quite old flames — they talk of a hesitant attempt at a kiss a long time ago — both were married to others at one point. But now that their significant others have died, they have arranged, in their own shy and uncertain way, to meet up again by this quiet lake.

Like a coy, concise short story you might remember having read years ago, A Love Song is the simplest of tales, but there’s a complex universe of longing contained within it. Most of it comes thanks to its two stars — two of our greatest supporting actors getting the rare chance to take center stage. Dickey and Studi are renowned for their tough demeanors, but here, thanks to the attentive, lingering patience of director Max Walker-Silverman, we see genuine tenderness. (It’s a shame that mainstream cinema has trained us to think of such human and familiar faces as tough, weathered, even menacing — or, as Dickey herself once put it, “mean and hard.”)

Tenderness and hesitation. Neither Faye nor Lito knows what to do next once they’ve met back up, and as they gently dance around their feelings, we get glimmers of their past lives. There’s very little exposition or backstory in A Love Story , but there’s just enough of it — a word here, a memory there — that the two central characters come through as real people, relatable yet mysterious. As we watch them, we may start to sense that we’ve caught Faye and Lito at transitional points in their lives. Neither really knows what their next act holds. They don’t even know if they’ll be together. At one point, they play music together, and for a second, their reunion feels fleeting and glorious.

The setting plays an important role here, clearly. That the film takes place at a campsite — a point of temporary stasis — makes some metaphorical sense. Early on, Faye is clearly in a holding pattern — her life shorn of anything extraneous or permanent. She even lets a family of cowboys take the engine out of her pickup after theirs goes bust; that’s not a sign that she intends to stay but, rather, that she doesn’t know what to do with herself. Later, as she and Lito sit atop a small overhang, their legs dangling in the air, they remember that the lake used to reach all the way to that spot. The changing land echoes the changing people — and vice versa. It’s all supremely touching and evocative without ever feeling too on-the-nose or heavy-handed.

A Love Song may not be perfect. At times, Walker-Silverman goes for an arch, deadpan, posed style that suggests he has spent plenty of time with the independent cinema of the 1980s and early ’90s, but it doesn’t feel entirely in line with the highly lived-in, naturalistic performances of his two leads. Still, this adds to the handmade, modest charm of the film. Besides, the director knows what he’s got with these two actors, and he wisely lets them take over the screen whenever possible. This approach pays off beautifully. A Love Song is a small gem.

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‘A Love Song’ Gives Dale Dickey the Spotlight She Deserves — Finally

By David Fear

A woman awakens in a trailer, parked near the Colorado Rockies. She wades into a body of water, pulling out a small lobster cage, then goes back into her modest mobile home to heat up a pot. Coffee is made. A transistor radio is turned on. On a booskhelf sits two Audubon guides, one for birds and the other for star constellations. In front of her sits an American landscape of almost indescribable beauty. She’s alone, silent, contemplative and comfortable in her pastoral solitude. This is a lady used to waiting for something. Or, maybe, someone.

One of the multitude of pleasures in A Love Song, writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s elliptical yet deeply emotional character study, is that you eventually get to know this older woman, informational drip by informational drip, according to her own timetable. Her name is Faye. She was married at one point, and there’s a reason she’s in this particular lot in this particular trailer park. Whenever she encounters other folks — a couple on a “proposal” road trip that’s hit a snag, a family looking to excavate a relative’s remains, the local mailman — Faye is polite but reticent. She’s neighborly enough to literally give someone the engine out of her car when their truck’s motor sputters and stalls. But there’s something withholding about her. Faye’s mind is perpetually elsewhere.

Because, seven years ago, Faye wrote a letter to a childhood friend named Lito. Both have a lot of life under their belt. Both have loved and lost. He told her that he had a gray car and a black dog. She told him she’d be here, in this lot by the water, and to come visit. There’s a lot going on behind that casual invitation — a palpable one-who-got-away sense of pining. Then, one day, he shows up on her doorstep, wildflowers in hand. And you’re witnessing something that is either, at long last, beginning … or slowly coming to an end.

There’s a genuine sense of admiration for these two middle-aged characters emanating from behind the camera, and you get the feeling that Walker-Silverman, a young filmmaker with a handful of shorts to his name, isn’t that interested in too-cool-for-film-school showboating. (That said, it won’t surprise anyone to learn that this premiered at Sundance and comes flecked with bits of traditional Sundance quirkiness, from deadpan reaction shots to a precocious kid in a cowboy hat randomly giving Faye a canoe “for recreation and romantic excursions.”) He’s more into giving his actors a showcase. One actor in particular, and it’s here that you discover the real object of A Love Song ‘s tender affections.

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Dale Dickey and Wes Studi have, between the two of them, over 100 credited roles in TV and movies, and even more stolen scenes embedded within those projects; decades-old or not, the phrase “character actor” could have been invented for them. If you’ve seen Winter’s Bone or True Blood, Heat and The Last of the Mohicans, you know these supporting players intimately. They rarely get the spotlight, however, and to watch these two veterans infuse a sense of life lived, one full of heartbreak and fading happiness, into Faye and Lito is to be reminded why these “smaller,” Indiewood-type films remain so vital to well-balanced cinematic diets. The interplay between the two of them, with each gingerly trying to connect after so many years apart and risk even the dimmest spark being resuscitated, gives the low-key story a sense of high stakes. You can see these two performers drawing things out of other onscreen, teasing and testing each other with every tentative attempt to see if it’s finally Faye and Lito’s time to make good on old promises.

But make no mistake: A Love Song is, first and foremost, a love letter to Dickey. A native of Knoxville, Tennessee, who might have walked straight out of a Walker Evans photo, she’s often been cast as tough matriarchs and economic fringe dwellers, with that beautiful face of hers too often used as an onscreen shorthand for hard times. Here, however, Dickey gets to play the scales, and prove that she’s as deft a soloist as she is a singer in the chorus. She’s in every scene, sometimes not saying a word, and yet you get all of Faye’s hesitations, hopes, self-sufficient leanings, loneliness, scars, and eventually, her sense of her place in a world she may have once shunned. One sideways glance from Dickey is worth a thousand what-if monologues. A morning greeting to an empty side of her bed plays like a six-word Hemingway short story. Watch her gently light up (and try to hide her joy) when Studi asks if he can take her picture. It’s the sort of performance that makes you stop taking great actors for granted. And while she’s nothing if not a team player, Dickey proves that she’s earned this center-stage turn. Many voices contribute to this modest, delicate love song. Hers is the one you hear the loudest, and the one that truly, madly, deeply cracks you in half.

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A Love Song

At a campground in the rural West, a woman waits alone for an old flame from her past to arrive, uncertain of his intentions while bashful about her own. At a campground in the rural West, a woman waits alone for an old flame from her past to arrive, uncertain of his intentions while bashful about her own. At a campground in the rural West, a woman waits alone for an old flame from her past to arrive, uncertain of his intentions while bashful about her own.

• Max Walker-Silverman
• Dale Dickey
• Michelle Wilson
• 31 User reviews
• 70 Critic reviews
• 78 Metascore
• 9 wins & 15 nominations

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• Soundtracks Lovin' in My Baby's Eyes Written and performed by Taj Mahal Courtesy of RCA Records By arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment

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• Jan 9, 2023
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• October 4, 2022 (Canada)
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• Jul 31, 2022

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• Runtime 1 hour 21 minutes

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'A Love Song' is a quiet study of a life with a stunning backdrop and great actors

There are many reasons to see “A Love Song,” writer and director Max Walker-Silverman’s debut feature, but two outshine all the rest: Dale Dickey and Wes Studi.

They’re two of the greatest character actors working and have been for a long time, and it’s a low-key delight to see them carry a film.

In reality it’s Dickey, so great in supporting roles in so many films and shows (“Winter’s Bone,” “Justified,” even “Iron Man 3”), who carries the film. She’s in almost every scene as a woman waiting, living out the moments of each day in repetition.

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'A Love Story' may be slow paced, but it's never boring

Faye, Dickey's character, resides in a trailer hitched to her truck in a campsite in Colorado. She catches crawdads every day, boils them on her gas stove and eats them on a card table out front. She has a battery-powered radio, an old one with a tuning dial that she twists to randomly capture whatever song the dial lands on. Somehow it always plays just the song she needs, she says later, even if she doesn’t realize it at the time.

That’s about as close to magical realism as the film gets. It’s a stripped-down movie, as stripped down as Faye’s trailer where she goes about her daily routine. But it’s also a patient one, which may translate to some audiences as slow or boring.

It’s definitely the former, but never the latter.

Faye is interrupted on occasion, like by the couple (Michelle Wilson and Benja K. Thomas) who invite her for dinner. They’re at a neighboring site, working their way through national parks and toward a marriage invitation that hasn’t gotten around to happening yet.

Faye also chats with the mailman (John Way), whose letters are carried by mule. Nothing today, ma’am. Maybe tomorrow.

Then there is the family of cowhands who buried their father beneath her trailer some time ago, and wonder if she might move to another camp site so they can dig him up and move him?

No, Faye explains, she can’t. Someone may be expecting to find her here.

That someone is Lito (Studi).

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This film isn't bound by the idea of traditional romance or happy endings

They were childhood friends, long ago. We learn in bits and pieces — only a few pieces, not the whole puzzle — that one of them might have wanted to kiss the other (they debate who initiated it), but life took them in different directions.

Now both have lost their spouses. If they could meet again, what would come of it? When Lito finally arrives, along with his dog and his guitar, we find out.

There is an understated beauty to their interactions — shyness giving way to a tentative familiarity (Faye wasn’t even sure what Lito looked like before he arrived) that plays nicely against the more grandly depicted beauty of the rural scenery around them. They play guitars together and harmonize, eat ice cream.

What do you do, Lito asks, surveying the spartan existence? “There’s days and there’s nights, and I got a book for each,” she explains — a bird-watching book for daytime, a book of constellations for night. (Faye reflexively names aloud whatever bird she hears outside.)

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Walker-Silverman, to his credit, is not beholden to the idea of traditional happy endings, which is not to give anything away. It’s merely a description of how he lets his film play out, as naturally as the performances of his leads, who never seem to be acting. Instead they are exploring, whether it’s their surroundings or each other.

“A Love Song” is, no doubt, a small movie (it only lasts 81 minutes), a miniature study of a life. But it is an oddly compelling one. And Dickey and Studi masterfully make the difficult look easy.

'A Love Song' 4 stars

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Director: Max Walker-Silverman.

Cast: Dale Dickey, Wes Studi, John Way.

Rating:  PG for mild thematic elements.

Note: In theaters Aug. 19.

Reach Goodykoontz at [email protected] . Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm . Twitter: @goodyk . Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter .

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A love song.

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• Parents Say 1 Review
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Common Sense Media Review

Beautifully filmed romantic drama has references to death.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that A Love Song is a sweet romantic drama about a woman called Faye (Dale Dickey), who is staying at a Colorado campsite, waiting for her childhood sweetheart, Lito, to visit. Unusually for the genre, the two leads are older, and Lito (Wes Studi) is played by a Native American actor, while…

Why Age 10+?

Characters drink alcohol on occasion. Passing mention of pot.

Mention of dead body buried nearby and reference to the death of partners.

Kiss on lips and reference to a kiss in 10th grade. It is implied two characters

Any Positive Content?

It's important to appreciate the simple things in life. Love can be found at any

Faye is self-sufficient, catching her own crawfish and doing her own physical re

Lead is a White woman in her early 60s, which is unusual for a genre dominated b

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Kiss on lips and reference to a kiss in 10th grade. It is implied two characters sleep together, but no undressing or nudity is shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

It's important to appreciate the simple things in life. Love can be found at any age. There's beauty in nature and honesty.

Positive Role Models

Faye is self-sufficient, catching her own crawfish and doing her own physical repairs, and shows perseverance in not giving up hope. Though she is alone for much of the film, she takes pleasure in simple things and is content with her own company. She shows kindness to others, lending her engine to a family whose truck is broken down. Lito is respectful and thoughtful, and sticks to his word. A lesbian couple on the campsite show kindness and concern for Faye, inviting her for dinner and encouraging her to open up.

Diverse Representations

Lead is a White woman in her early 60s, which is unusual for a genre dominated by younger love stories. Her love interest is a man played by a Native American actor of the Cherokee Nation. Of the few other characters in the campsite, there is a Black lesbian couple and passing mention is made to same-sex marriage.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that A Love Song is a sweet romantic drama about a woman called Faye ( Dale Dickey ), who is staying at a Colorado campsite, waiting for her childhood sweetheart, Lito, to visit. Unusually for the genre, the two leads are older, and Lito ( Wes Studi ) is played by a Native American actor, while there is also a Black lesbian couple who befriend Faye. There is some drinking and reference to pot, as well as a kiss on the lips (it's implied that the couple then sleep together) and mention of death. The film is gentle, beautifully shot and characters show thoughtfulness and perseverance. However, the slow pace may not appeal to younger viewers or those who prefer a more traditional "Hollywood" romance. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (1)

Based on 1 parent review

What's the Story?

In A LOVE SONG, Faye ( Dale Dickey ), a widowed woman in her early 60s, stays alone at a campsite in Colorado. Communing with nature and her trusty radio, Faye bides her time before a promised visit from her childhood sweetheart, Lito ( Wes Studi ).

Is It Any Good?

This romantic drama is a subtle and lyrical affair, its stillness and silence punctuated by intimate close-ups, scratchy grassroots radio, and visits from campsite oddballs. There's a quiet sense of anticipation through much of A Love Song , even after Faye's gentleman caller arrives. Writer-director Max Walker-Silverman tears up the genre rulebook with his debut feature film and asks viewers to join his characters on a journey that could go anywhere, or nowhere at all. The simple beauty of nature fills the screen and the characters' days -- brought to life by Alfonso Herrera Salcedo's awe-inspiring cinematography and Ramzi Bashour's playful score. Quirky Wes Anderson -style touches offer an absurdist lens to Faye's monotony, giving scenes a dreamlike quality in places and adding to the sense of a story lost in time and space. A breath of fresh air as pure and cleansing as its sweeping natural setting.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about representation in A Love Song . How did the leads differ from those of a typical "Hollywood" romance? Can you think of other films that buck the stereotypes often seen in love stories?

The dialogue in the film is sparse. In what other ways did we learn about the characters and their feelings? Did you think the techniques were effective?

Faye shows perseverance in her dedication to waiting for a visit from her childhood sweetheart. Can you think of times in your life when you've shown perseverance? Why is it such an important life skill to have?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 29, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : September 27, 2022
• Cast : Dale Dickey , Wes Studi , Michelle Wilson , Benja K. Thomas
• Director : Max Walker-Silverman
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Indigenous actors
• Studio : Bleecker Street Media
• Genre : Romance
• Topics : Cars and Trucks
• Character Strengths : Perseverance
• Run time : 81 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : mild thematic elements
• Last updated : December 6, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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‘A Love Song’ Review: Dale Dickey and Wes Studi Lead a Micro-Budget Romance in Nomadland

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Bleecker Street releases the film in theaters on Friday, July 29.

There’s a bait-and-switch scene in Max Walker-Silverman’s feature directorial debut, “A Love Song,” a picturesque but emotionally inert film that teases more depth than the script can provide. Faye ( Dale Dickey ), an older woman of few words with a camper parked by a tranquil stream, is having dinner with a vacationing Black lesbian couple. A widow of seven years, Faye has been waiting in the vast Coloradan landscape for the arrival of a man she hasn’t seen in four decades. As she describes him to these two women, her gruff exterior gives way to giddiness, and for a split second, Walker-Silverman invites the viewer into a tender, romantic Western that might move against conventions.

His picture’s initial, promising premise will no doubt remind some of Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland.” It’s the kind of search for autumnal love you want to wrap your arms around. And the type of chewable script ready made for two adept, veteran actors like Dickey and Wes Studi. But Silverman’s “A Love Song,” a slight, brisk, all too thin film, is far more evasive than Zhao’s devastating drama, and far less satisfying too.

It’s a work mostly depending on Dickey to carry the day. For the first third of the film, Faye, outlined by cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo’s vividly verdant landscapes, holds the bulk of our attention as she moves through her daily routine of fishing for lobster, boiling the crustaceans, and then eating a waterside dinner for one as she listens to her transistor radio. How long she’s been here isn’t altogether clear. And for a time, with an unhurried pace, “A Love Song” finds pleasure in Faye merely existing in this pastoral but purgatorial liminal point.

Walker-Silverman, in fact, sprinkles hints of magical realism: Characters appear out of nowhere, causing Dickey to fluff her hair in anticipation of his arrival, and her radio always plays the exact right song, often a forlorn country ballad, at the exact right time. But these plot devices offer few payoffs. The rural siblings, who wish to dig underneath her trailer so they might move their deceased father to a different resting place, exist to make Faye stay. Conversely, the Black lesbian couple are an all-too-obvious period to the end of Faye’s journey. Somewhere between fairy dust and salt of the earth, these characters become mirages without a semblance of real, human emotion.

Under Dickey’s weary visage, however, these modest components hold together for the arrival of Studi as Lito, a widower and childhood sweetheart of Faye’s. The two characters seem to hail from a different time. Dickey’s trailer, furnished with a vintage interior, painted in shades of harvest gold, recalls the 1970s. The radio appears only slightly newer. Neither Faye nor Lito seem to have cell phones. They initially corresponded by letter.

The narrative’s focal point takes place in a single day: Faye and Lito reminisce, sharing childhood memories, they swim together, and try to find shelter in each other from their respective loneliness, making small talk. Both Dickey and Studi shoulder the lesser material through a charming naturalism that papers over the script’s artificiality.

On a basic level, the set-up of these tender characters by Walker-Silverman makes little emotional sense. Faye tells people that after 40 years she barely remembers Lito’s face. But the idea of two people keeping in close enough contact for one to have the address of the other, while knowing little else about that person, other than their spouse is dead, feels far-fetched.

Certainly Faye only sees Lito at a surface level, as a path away from isolation. And in a world where few of your friends are still alive, when the connections to your past moves further and further into the forgotten, pining for romance in an old flame, even if your spark was more like a nostalgic ember than a passionate wildfire, offers a valid entry point. Especially since the edification of a bygone way of life serves as the bread and butter of the Western genre. The problem arises from Walker-Silverman seeing these characters at a surface level, too.

As written, Faye and Lito barely rise above being ciphers for grief. They require Studi, and especially Dickey, to find a depth that, in the hands of lesser actors, would be undiscoverable. What does it mean for a single widow to live self-sufficiently underneath the stars? How does it feel for a Black lesbian couple to roam the West? None of the narrative bows, even when tied, feel earned. “A Love Song” concerns two people learning to love again, a sweet, life-affirming topic. It’s the “how” that’s lacking.

“A Love Song” premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. 

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Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – A Love Song (2022)

December 8, 2022 by Shaun Munro

A Love Song, 2022.

Written and directed by Max Walker-Silverman. Starring Dale Dickey, Wes Studi, Michelle Wilson, Benja K. Thomas, John Way, and Marty Grace Dennis.

Two childhood sweethearts, both now widowed, share a night by a lake in the mountains. A love story for those who are alone.

It’s always tremendously rewarding to see a long-serving character actor be afforded the platform of a starring movie role, and instantly recognisable mainstay Dale Dickey makes the sure most of the opportunity in Max Walker-Silverman’s unassuming directorial debut.

This unconventional romance revolves around the middle-aged Faye (Dickey), who has parked her campervan at a specific campsite in the Colorado mountains where she awaits the arrival of a special someone; a childhood love, Lito (Wes Studi), who she hasn’t seen in many decades. Each still mourning the deaths of their spouses sometime prior, they plan to meet, catch up, sort through the past, and perhaps even plot a course for the future.

A film critic cliche though it might be, A Love Song is easily described as a warm cup of cocoa of a movie, gliding on a calm breeze over its lithe 81 minutes. Despite this scant runtime, Walker-Silverman is in no rush whatsoever, with Studi’s Lito not even turning up until the start of act two. Until then, the filmmaker trains his camera on Faye as she kills time awaiting Lito’s arrival, comprised of numerous wordless scenes where she listens to music and catches crawdads, with the audience invited to simply get drunk on the chill vibe and painterly mountainous scenery.

There are also unexpected flecks of dry absurdism; Faye crosses paths with a number of memorable Characters, including a friendly mailman delivering letters, a Black lesbian couple contemplating marriage, and best of all a family whose father is buried underneath Faye’s camper, and who wish to dig him up to re-bury him elsewhere.

The dynamic unavoidably shifts once Lito finally arrives, yet that relaxed air remains largely the same. Neither Faye nor Lito is much for raising their voice, and listening to them pore over memories, bond over their mutual bereavement, and explore whether they still really know each other so many decades on, it feels like we’re being made privy to a most private, intimate conversation we have no business listening in on.

Watching them play guitar together, lament the passage of time, ponder the pangs of love, and of course explore their own possible romance would give cause for portent in most others movies, but there’s virtually no desire here to indulge melodrama or even really escalate the sexual tension. After all, as one particularly sweet moment proves, sometimes you just want someone to hold your ice cream cone while you scoop a frozen treat into it.

You may not know the name Dale Dickey, but you will almost certainly recognise her from some of her 125+ film and TV roles since 1995, typically playing down-and-outers, drug addicts, “hillbillies,” and so on; she won an Independent Spirit Award for her performance in 2010’s Winter’s Bone. Her unique, deeply expressive face lends easy character to even the basest role, and while her most mainstream parts are typically also her most boisterous, here she’s asked to say so much more through her furrowed countenance.

The quiet, restless impatience as she waits for Lito to show up could become ennui-inducing with a less-interesting actress playing Faye, but she effortlessly commands attention even when the film’s rhythms are at their most lackadaisical. That’s not to say she isn’t given ripe opportunities to hit more outward emotional beats; a mid-film monologue about grief is sure to touch all but the most stone-hearted.

And while this is absolutely Dickey’s show, the great Wes Studi brings his expected gravitas to the fore, showing up just as audiences themselves might start getting fidgety. Like Faye, Lito is quietly tortured by an angst that won’t leave, yet despite the unavoidable cloud this hangs over their maybe-relationship, there’s not a speck of rehearsed contrivance to their wholly authentic interactions.

For his feature debut, Max Walker-Silverman has assembled a low-key visual feast of a film, DP Alfonso Herrera Salcedo lending a gritty photochemical look to the picture while seemingly relying largely on natural light. There’s also a distinctly timeless quality to the movie’s aesthetic, aided by the general lack of contemporary technology and pop-culture references throughout.

But Walker-Silverman is evidently aware that his greatest weapon is his leading lady’s uniquely contoured face, which can so strikingly wear the weight of heartbreak and grief across it. He clearly knows when to just point the camera at Dickey and leave all else alone, but also makes good on the epic mountainous scenery surrounding his cast, and in one mesmerising sequence sets the naked starry sky as a mouth-watering backdrop. This is all set to Ramzi Bashour’s fittingly easy-going guitar score, and also the songs that play on Faye’s radio at times that, as she herself notes, seem almost supernaturally opportune.

Some may find  A Love Song aimless to a fault, but living in this world with these richly drawn characters for a small window of time is a joy unto itself. Sure, it probably could’ve been truncated into a decent short film, but in its longer form gives out an airier, more lived-in vibe. It’s not saying anything particularly fresh or profound, yet cannily eschews the most obvious sentimental storytelling choices in favour of something more gratifyingly melancholy.

Much-respected character actors Dale Dickey and Wes Studi prove to be great company in this gentle tale of childhood companions reconnecting decades later.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

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The crow 2024's debut audience score rt triples critic score (& breaks franchise trend), one of the best western remakes of all time comes to netflix in september.

In  A Love Song , a letter brings two people together who haven't seen each other in decades. With time passing, it's easy to forget the contours of a person — the way they look, the way they move, the way they say a name. But, as if from a past life, sometimes they fit right back into the picture and maybe they can even replace something that has been missing for quite some time. Directed by Max Walker-Silverman,  A Love Song is a quiet but stirring fable about reunions, love, and time set against the backdrop of the American West. What the film lacks in its sparse script is more than made up for by the two actors who share the majority of screen time together.

A Love Song  is anchored by lead performances from Dale Dickey as Faye and Wes Studi as Lito. The pair are due to meet in the shadow of the Colorado Mountains. Faye, who has known Lito for decades and hasn't seen him in just as long, has been widowed for seven years. When Lito finally does arrive at her campsite, it kicks off an exploration of sorts as the two reacquaint themselves with each other and maybe even realize that Faye asking Lito on a date all those years ago in grade school foreshadowed their feelings for each other years later.

Related: Sharp Stick Review: Froseth's Stellar Performance Saves Dunham's Clunky Script

Parked at campsite 7, Faye's routine is put on display early on in the film. Every morning, she makes coffee on the stove and boils crawfish that she caught from the lake in front of her trailer. She waits for something to come in the mail and joins a couple for dinner, telling them it's been years (" enough decades to stand on ") since she's seen Lito. This does well in building up anticipation for Lito's impending arrival. Like Faye, the audience wants him to get to campsite 7. She's clearly excited and Dickey infuses Faye with a sort of childlike wonder, as if her waiting for this man she knew in her youth has allowed it to resurface. During one fake-out, Faye stands up as a car approaches, sipping her coffee to get the taste of crawfish out of her mouth while tucking her hair behind her ears. It's not Lito yet and she returns to her routine, ignoring the mountains on the horizon in favor of something less tangible.

A Love Story 's naturalism and its gorgeous setting will immediately evoke Chloé Zhao's critically acclaimed movie  Nomadland,  even if it fails to live up to that film's lofty ideas. Still, the American West and the mythos associated with it is a worthy backdrop for a story as seemingly expansive as Faye and Lito's. The decades that have passed since the pair have seen each other linger over the proceedings like the mountains that populate the backdrop. The time only makes their reunion ache with more immediacy, as if the next day could bring another decade wherein they may not see each other again.

Though the script may be sparse, Dickey is charming and brilliant in her role as Faye, allowing the veteran actor — who is most known for small roles in everything from  Breaking Bad to  Winter's Bone and  Iron Man 3 —  to really shine as the reserved frontier woman. Dickey couldn't have a better screen partner in Studi. The pair's meeting, which takes place over the course of one day, is wonderfully portrayed as they play the game of getting to know one another again after so many years have gone by. Unfortunately,  A Love Song doesn't let that day linger for too long. Maybe that's the point, but it still feels like the film sells itself a bit short when it comes to its central relationship. Regardless, what  A Love Song lacks in execution it more than makes up for in stellar performances and beautifully directed scenes.

More: Alone Together Review: Sweet Romance & Relevant Themes Overcome Poor Writing

A Love Song  releases in theaters on July 29. The film is 81 minutes long and is rated PG for mild thematic elements.

A Love Song

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A love song review: dale dickey and wes studi elevate a frustratingly inert romance.

Writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s film plays like a tamped-down version of Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland .

Set on a rural Colorado campground and charting the idle life of Faye (Dale Dickey), a sixtysomething woman living off the grid and waiting for the arrival of an unknown person, writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s A Love Song plays like a tamped-down version of Nomadland . But rather than integrating social commentary on late capitalism and what it means to live life at a remove from middle-class stability as in Chloé Zhao’s film, Walker-Silverman focuses on the minutiae of solitude, observing Faye as she reads books on birding, goes fishing, and looks out onto the horizon from her trailer home.

These activities are punctuated by a smattering of visitors, which include a largely silent group of men, accompanied by a young girl, looking to exhume the remains of their dead father, plus a pair of women who keep Faye company one evening. But it’s finally the arrival of Lito (Wes Studi) that puts the film’s wheels into motion, as it becomes clear that he’s either an ex-lover or a potential future lover who can bring greater meaning to Faye’s life.

As the title indicates, the love angle becomes the narrative’s focus, but it’s altogether unconvincing as anything other than an admittedly welcome excuse to let Dickey and Studi share a lovely series of scenes together that slowly reveal and define the nature of their characters’ relationship. There are broader, indirect suggestions made by Walker-Silverman’s screenplay that gesture toward insights about the nature of solitude and believing that, no matter one’s stage in life, things can be reformed in significant ways. But there aren’t suitably dramatic circumstances or sequences that draw this out in any specific manner beyond the obvious connection that the pair shares as they sit talking or stargazing.

When characters speak, they don’t so much reveal poetic or poignant details about their lives as they do mundane observations about living in rural places. At one point, one character explains how her grandmother “ate an ice cream cone and watched a cowboy movie every night” and lived to be 101. These sorts of quaint details suggest a potentially richer portrait of the value of rural life in American culture than A Love Song ultimately knows how to paint, as it relies on wide shots of the distant mountains to stand in for a fruitful interrogation of what it means to occupy the open terrain of the United States in the present day.

The dynamics of the film’s core relationship are reminiscent of The Bridges of Madison County in how Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep’s middle-aged lovers grapple with the depth of their feelings for one another. But whereas Eastwood’s film embeds its narrative within the greater context of how generational legacy affects those in the present, A Love Song remains frustratingly insular and mostly confined to the emotions of its main characters.

The only question that comes to matter in the film is whether Faye and Lito will remain together or not, and Walker-Silverman approaches the answer with an underwhelming sense of urgency and perception. The circumstances play weightier than their dramatization, and the film’s PG-rated sensibilities are such that matters of sex, desire, and nature are never interrogated as they pertain to these older adults, with Walker-Silverman opting to have them play guitar together and look tenderly into one another’s eyes. While Dickey and Studi are a compelling on-screen pair, they would have benefited from a script with more on his mind.

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Clayton Dillard is a lecturer in cinema at San Francisco State University.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Past Lives’ on Paramount+, a Captivatingly Philosophical Love Story from Filmmaker Celine Song

Where to stream:, before midnight, ‘pearl’ ending explained: why does howard stay with pearl, stream it or skip it: ‘pearl’ on netflix, the ‘x’ prequel featuring an all-time performance by mia goth, stream it or skip it: ‘janet planet’ on vod, a quintessential and quietly revelatory mother-daughter movie, ‘maxxxine’ comes to digital, but when will ‘maxxxine’ be streaming on max.

A word of advice: Don’t let Past Lives ( now streaming on Paramount+ , in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video ) slip by. Celine Song’s directorial debut is a rarity, an intelligently written and acted adult drama spanning a couple dozen years in the lives of childhood friends who reunite after being separated by many years and many, many miles, and featuring a breakout performance by Greta Lee (of Russian Doll and The Morning Show fame). The film boasts Oscar-caliber work in front of and behind the camera – let’s not forget that during the long, slow drag of awards season, OK? – and here’s why.    

PAST LIVES : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open with a three-shot: Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), Nora (Lee) and Arthur (John Magaro) sitting at a bar. Hae Sung and Nora talk while Arthur sits quietly, disconnected from the conversation. The voices of two characters – unseen, never to be heard again – watch them, making a sort of game out of guessing the social dynamics of the scene. Who’s married? Are any of them siblings? What are they talking about? Hold that thought, because we’ll return to this scene at the end of the movie. Cut to 24 YEARS EARLIER, when Hae Sung and Nora (Seung Min Yim and Seung Ah Moon, respectively) are 12-year-old classmates in Seoul, mutual crushes in the cute, awkward manner of youth, which is to say, they tease each other a little – specifically, about how she cries all the time – and play it a bit blase even though their attraction is blatantly obvious. One thing: Nora isn’t Nora yet. She goes by her Korean name, Na Young, and will change it to Nora Moon when she and her parents and sister immigrate to Toronto. Na Young’s mother arranges a date with Hae Sung, hoping to create a good memory before they depart. The kids enjoy an afternoon climbing on sculptures at a park and then Na Young’s family moves on.

Subtitle: 12 YEARS PASS. Nora lives in New York City; she’s a playwright who’s about to go to Montauk for an artist’s residency. Hae Sung is still in Seoul, studying engineering; we see him out with his friends, all soused and bemoaning their despondent love lives. Nora learns that Hae Sung sought her out on Facebook, but couldn’t find her due to the name change. She reaches out. They video-chat with the glitchy tech of the early 2010s, but their mutual affection cuts through the stuttering audio and video. Their cross-continental conversations become a regular thing for how long exactly? Does it matter? They share themselves as well as they can, and there’s love there, and they seem to recognize it, although whether they say it or not isn’t quite clear. But the pragmatics of their professional lives don’t align. Any chance of one traveling to see the other is at least a year away. Nora says they should stop talking, and both acknowledge the pain of doing it, but do it anyway, and they move on.

Hae Sung goes to China to study, and we see him catch the smiling eyes of a young woman in a restaurant. Nora moves into a house for her residency, and meets Arthur, a fellow writer. Another subtitle: 12 YEARS PASS, again. Nora and Arthur are still together. Married, actually. They’re just returning to New York from Toronto, where they visited her parents. Seoul: We see Hae Sung and his friends in a less-soused state than when we last saw them. They’re older now but Hae Sung is still unlucky in love – he just broke up with his girlfriend. His friends tease him: Why is he going to New York? “Vacation, to rest,” he insists, defensively. But we know why, and so does he, and so do his friends, one of whom points out that the New York forecast is for rain, rain, rain, and they laugh, with the exception of Hae Sung. He looks sad, depressed maybe, lonely possibly, when he gets to the city. Now he’s nervous, waiting to see Nora. Note: He knows she’s married. They meet on the sidewalk and as they lock eyes the movie briefly cuts to their 24-years-younger selves playing in the park. She gives him a big long hug and he looks like he’s on the verge of tears. Wait, wasn’t she the one who was a crybaby?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The biggest reference point is Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, if it was directed like a less romantic Woody Allen or less minimalistic Kelly Reichardt.

Performance Worth Watching: With an arresting, understated performance, Lee (who showcased a different skillset as a comic actress in Russian Doll ) establishes herself as a significant talent capable of worldlessly exploring the depths of a character – and she does so with nary a hint of histrionics or a single overheated overture.

Memorable Dialogue: Nora employs a metaphor while describing her marriage to Arthur in a keen example of the layered, but simple verse of Song’s script: “It’s like planting two trees in one pot. Our roots need to find their place.”

Sex and Skin: None, although the implied and imagined sexual intimacy here is off the damn charts.

Our Take: What a debut from Song. What an emergence by Lee. What an introduction (to most of us Westerners, anyway) to Yoo. What a reiteration of Magaro’s skill. Past Lives is a mature, engrossing and subtly metaphysical love story about the what-ifs, what-could-have-beens and what-nows of a friendship. Song holds on those moments so her characters, and by extension her audience, can contemplate a splinter of imagined reality, one in which maybe Nora is still Na Young and never moved from Korea, or one in which Hae Sung was more confident in himself (this is the film’s quietest, most devastating tragedy), or one in which Arthur wasn’t Nora’s circumstantial lover and partner, wasn’t the only other single person at the residency. Nora and Hae Sung ponder whether they knew each other in a previous life, and the multiverse vibrates with unconsummated possibility. 

Shabier Kirchner’s ( Small Axe ) cinematography is plaintive and evocative, noticing the grit and splendor – and soul – of the deep-urban environments of New York and Seoul; it’s romantic without being romanticized, if you’ll allow me to so finely split that hair. Nora, Hae Sung and Arthur’s surroundings play a key role in, for lack of a better word, their destinies as average people, citydwellers with professional careers and ambitions and dreams and yearnings. Song builds to an emotionally rich, quietly devastating climax that’ll catch in your throat, and linger as you contemplate yourself and who you are and who you were and who you might have been; I don’t believe in predestination, but chance and fate sure seem to be on opposite ends of a very short bridge, don’t they? 

It’s the rare film that so unpretentiously broaches the philosophical, especially within the confines of a modern dramatic character-driven romance. It covers the minutiae and the big ideas thoroughly and resourcefully. Every shot is well-considered, every line of dialogue neatly parsed, each performance exquisitely choreographed to convey a thoroughly conceived idea in a naturalistic style. It’s a lovely, lovely film, and one of the year’s best.

Our Call: Past Lives has the air of an under-the-radar masterpiece. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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