STRING THEORY

Playing today at 1 p.m. at the Vail Comedy Festival in Vail, Colorado:

On a String--Our heroine Isabel (Isabel Hagen) finds herself in the title state, and the string is steadily being pulled tighter. She's a professional violist in New York, playing in a quartet and picking up solo gigs at weddings, funerals, proposals, the occasional film score.

Played by Isabel Hagen, who also wrote and directed and who really is a Julliard-trained violist, Isabel lives in a smallish apartment with her oddball musical family--pleasantly inappropriate parents (Dylan Baker and Karen Blood); passive-aggressive pianist brother (Oliver Hagen, the director's real-life brother). Her love life is a disappointing low-level mess, she suffers chronic wrist pain, and she's worried about an upcoming audition for the Philharmonic. She gets a job teaching violin to a little girl, and drifts into an attraction with her married father (Frederick Heller).

We see the strange episodes of her life, some funny, some poignant, some creepy, almost all of them awkward and tinged with frustration. Violists, I am told, are a traditional butt of musician's jokes, as in: "Q: What's the difference between a violist and a coffin?  A: With a coffin, the dead person is on the inside" or "Q: What does the viola section have in common with the Beatles? A: Neither have played together since 1969."

This movie seems to be a dramatization of this hapless state of simply being a violist. The focus is on Hagen's performance; her onscreen version of herself is patient and emotionally open, with a charming, inviting smile and manner. But she's stretched thin--Isabel is a serious, exquisitely-trained artist knocked around by her cloutless station within the classical music world.

This modest, surefooted gem has some of the flavor of minor-key indie comedies of the '80s and '90s, and the performances, both acting and musical, are impressive. It played last month at Phoenix Film Festival, and if you happen to be at the Vail Comedy Festival today, as in Saturday, May 23, you can catch it at 1 p.m. Hopefully it will go on to find a wider audience.