Faye (Dale Dickey) sits at Campsite 7 by the lake with the mountains in the distance, waiting for an old friend to come and visit.  Each morning she checks her trap in the lake and then goes up to share a quick cup of coffee with Sam (John Way), the empty-handed postman.  One morning, her solitude is interrupted by the arrival of Lito (Wes Studi), with flowers in hand, and the two spend the day reminiscing about their time together in high school and how they spent their respective lives. 

Max Walker-Silverman’s feature debut premiered at Sundance where it was picked up by Bleecker Street.  Light on dialogue yet heavy with emotion, A Love Song runs only 81 minutes in length, but it encapsulates a lifetime colored by love and longing as memories flow freely from both Faye and Lito – now each widowed – and the lingering question of “What if?” while always present, never quite crosses the lips.  It is a film that allows both Dickey and Studi to revel in the poetry of what is left unsaid as they reckon with the grandness of a lifetime apart, but for those few short hours shared together, amid the massiveness of nature around them, the world feels small, and time feels slow, but nothing can be done to change the past. 

Dickey leads the film with a steely independence, but there is also a feeling of intense sadness and loss behind her stare.  All will be revealed in time, but A Love Song, while a single location, two-hander, is not as verbose as the concept would lead one to initially believe.  Faye is a woman who knows what she wants, but there is a lingering fear, be it of rejection or solitude or just the unknown, that colors her actions and weighs heavy on her soul.  She leaves it to fate having sent her invitation, and choosing her day to pack up and leave should Lito not show by blindly marking a day on her calendar because she finds solace in the comfort of not being alone, but there is a hesitancy to put herself out there and meet people, too.  Faye feels stuck and is hurting, but Dickey takes all of these uncertain feelings and portrays them cleanly in her performance, while also giving the woman a sense of hope and love.  It might not be at the forefront of her actions as she tries to preserve her heart, but it is seen in the moments alone, like when she awakes to a bird call and remarks that it is far from home. She wraps herself up in the nature that abounds and her knowledge, care, and excitement help to fill a void for her that the men in her life have left hollow. 

Faye spends her days in nature, learning about the local fauna, watching the birds, and enjoying the stars at night. Alfonso Herrera Salcedo’s camera captures the beauty of the West with grain reminiscent of a faded postcard or a stately illustration. Dickey then fits into the frame with grace, a muse in the garden, inspired by the beauty around her to slowly step out of her comfort zone and continue her journey through life.  

She is not alone in the lakeside campground. There is Jan (Michelle Wilson) who has fears of her own about proposing to her fiancé, Marie (Benja K. Thomas). Also nearby, a family of cowhands who are waiting for Faye to leave so they can exhume their father buried on Campsite 7 and move him to a more pristine location away from the newly erected pumpjack. They help represent the themes that will later color the narrative, a fear of putting oneself in a vulnerable position as Jan is and what happens when things that were supposed to last forever fall short, a concept the fatherless family is grappling with as the beauty of their father’s final resting place has since been tarnished. How do we find the courage to love in this life that is both richer when we share it with others, but by doing so we open ourselves up to the pain of heartbreak? What if we made a mistake on this finite timeline we find ourselves?   

Though Faye has a smattering of interactions with her campground neighbors, her free-spirited routine is, for lack of a better word, interrupted by Lito, though the hope of his arrival is the whole reason for her being out on Campsite 7 in the first place. We breathe that same sigh of relief along with Faye when we first see him standing at the door of her trailer with flowers in hand, but there is quickly a sense of nervousness and apprehension, not in a dangerous sense but in that there is no map or guideline for what happens next. They hesitantly begin to chat about their lives, their brief past together, their lives after high school, and how they plan to spend these twilight years now that their partners have both passed. They bond over music; Faye turning the dial at random swears it always finds the perfect song, Lito strumming his guitar. This middle act has all the nervous hesitation of a middle schooler approaching their crush for the first time, but it never lacks in maturity and A Love Song treats these careful emotions and its actors with dignity.  

Walker-Silverman’s film, bare-bones as it is, is full of heart and soul. It is an examination of a very different kind of person that has been left behind than in Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland (2020), an all-too-easy comparison, and treats Faye to a more idyllic independence; one without a five-gallon bucket that serves as a toilet. He views loneliness and sadness through rose-colored glasses with A Love Song, choosing to focus on the excitement of that deep inhale before taking a leap of faith instead of only just the fears. Unfortunately, its sparsity plays to the overall detriment because, while the performances are exceptional and the chemistry between Dickey and Studi is immediately apparent, the world Walker-Silverman creates for this torn-asunder paring offers so much more than is delivered in the brief, final cut. It plays out with enough gaps that it already feels like a fading memory, and while that lends itself well to the tone of the film, audiences are left understandably frustrated as we are never allowed to live in the moment with Faye and Lito which is ultimately the lesson of the film; to live with appreciation and love.