Love might be a simple, four-letter word but as baffling to fathom in life as it is tricky and ticklish to recreate on screen. It’s hard to pin down that intangible something that makes some love stories live across generations and others to die unheralded. On the face of it the oft told tale of a self-destructive, alcoholic musician discovering and mentoring a young singer and falling in love with her has the patent mushiness and schmaltz written all over it. It is a wonder then to find Bradley Cooper managing to steer clear of the expected sloppy sentimentality even in the most doleful of situations. He makes an inherently depressing, gloomy story sing.

The love that Jackson Maine (Cooper) finds in Ally (Lady Gaga), a struggling artiste he discovers quite out of the blue in a bar, feels lived in and honest; affecting than manipulative. And it’s not just because the two actors are perfectly in tune with each other, song for song, fleeting love-filled look for fleeting love-filled look. It’s because love doesn’t just dwell in the predictable, larger than life arc of the big ticket movie that A Star Is Born is. The god of love resides in small things. For his debut, Cooper shows remarkable self-assurance and poise, specially in making throwaway moments acquire a big resonance on screen. The little parts are lovely and the sum total of them satisfying.

Like the quiet, gentle and intimate sequence between Maine and Ally after their first meeting. The instant connect between two strangers, the shared confidences, the insecurity of the “big nose” (a recurrent motif) feels genuine, even in the dangerously heavy sounding bits like Maine telling Ally: “Everyone in the world is talented, but just a few have something to say and it’s those that the world is willing to lend an ear to.” Or in the eminently cheesy ones: “I wanted to get another look at you”.

There are people and relationships on the periphery of the Maine-Ally love that are as compelling, specially the complicated bond between Maine and his elder brother and manager (Sam Elliott), one that comes riding on ghosts from the past and assumed betrayals and sacrifices.

The human elements segue well with the musical sequences and the stage performances. Music is a character in itself, each song has a definite role in either underlining a situation or taking things forward. It’s like the journey of love coming a full circle within the soundtrack. From Shallow — “Tell me something boy, Aren't you tired tryin' to fill that void?” — to I’ll never love again — “If I knew it would be the last time, I would have broke my heart in two; Tryin' to save a part of you”. The camera lives up to the demands of both, delivering just as effectively for each — intimate with the human and matching the musical performances vigour for vigour, melancholy for melancholy.

Lady Gaga’s acting debut takes her charisma as a singer forward leaps and bounds. If she surprises as an actor, Cooper does no less as a singer. He may seemingly play second fiddle to her yet you feel for him and, in turn, for the love he feels for her. And you feel for his tragic flaw as well even though there are also problems of political incorrectness here — sympathy for and focus on a loser of a man as against a confident woman. Sam Elliot stays on in the mind even with just one broken, betrayed look in a confrontation scene with Cooper. The one who sticks out like a sore thumb is the rapacious, ambitious record producer Rez (Rafi Gavron) — painted with broad, stereotypical, villainous brushstrokes which take away from the larger emotional delicacy of the film.