In "Ali & Ava," a lovely surprise from English filmmaker Clio Barnard, music is more than just a soundtrack; it's the characters' very lifeblood.
When we first meet Ali (Adeel Akhtar), a part-time DJ in the northern English city of Bradford, he's cutting loose on top of his station wagon, dancing to a pounding Afrofuturist beat. Later that day, Ava (Claire Rushbrook) will take a bus across town and hear a Sammi Smith song that perfectly sums up her loneliness. Over the course of the movie she'll sing at a karaoke bar, work out to a Bollyrobics video and drop in on Ali's private man-cave, an inner sanctum stuffed with vinyl, sound equipment and other totems of a lifelong love of music.
That love isn't the only thing these two middle-aged strangers have in common, even if they do spend their first date, if that's what it is, jamming out to each other's favorite tunes. But it does account for the strange, improbable joy that animates this movie and the charming interracial love story it has to tell.
