Critics reviews

Given that the opening shot shows the heroine on the toilet, what a nice surprise to find that this is a pure love story, told with elegance and simplicity on a low budget... Buschel breaks up the staginess with things like that dance, as well as scenes of the lovers in bed, lit off-and-on by the neon light outside the window. Ireland and Sparks are charming, as is the movie's conviction that two kind souls finding each other is drama enough.

...When the director segues from medium shots to close-ups during Ireland and Sparks' initial dinner together, the device comes across as both obvious and apt. Mostly, however, the film thrives thanks to its superb lead performances, with Sparks exuding an endearingly off-kilter earnestness that nicely contrasts with Ireland's internalized phobic fears and self-doubt.

To describe the setup of "Sparrows Dance" is to risk alienating audiences fatigued by too-quirky characters and low-budget contrivance. In one corner, we have an unnamed, severely agoraphobic actress; in the other, a saxophone-playing, poetry-writing plumber. Between them lies a tiny New York City apartment and a mental-health problem as vast as a football field. Yet Mr. Buschel, armed with an ear for diverting dialogue and actors who know how to sell it, somehow makes it all work.

Buschel instead bounces our focus between profile shots of his actors, positioned on opposite sides of the screen, along with their images reflected off a mirror in the background. In this highly abstracted study of human isolation and desire and cinema as space, it's as if this would-be couple have been brought together as much by chance as by a director's highly calculated sense of framing.