“On a String” – And totally in tune [MOVIE REVIEW]
By Neely Swanson
Isabel Hagen, someone who deserves to be a household name, is a triple threat. Writer, director and star of the independent film “On a String,” Hagen won the Best Screenplay award at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival. A Juilliard-trained musician, she broke into the stand-up comedy world when a wrist injury forced her to take time off from the viola. Intuitively using her strength, classical music, she found a counterintuitive way into the rough and tumble world of standup by juxtaposing what she knew best with what she didn’t know at all. “On a String,” while not autobiographical, per se, takes elements of her life and inserts them into her character, not coincidentally named Isabel. I was totally taken by surprise and totally engaged.
The film opens on a close up of an oddly featured young man speaking beseechingly, eyes popping. Under a tree in this bucolic setting, a viola plays a beautiful Chopin Étude as we see that the young man has a velvet box in his hand, thrust forward. He has curated this moment exquisitely—crisp jacket and shirt, classical music played by a beautiful violist, a perfect moment for posterity His features change to stuttering bewilderment as it is clear he is proposing to his less than enthusiastic girlfriend. She is turning him down, clearly not feeling what he is, as the viola plays on. Awkward second turns into awkward seconds and he lets the musician know she is no longer needed. On the cusp of leaving this unfinished moment, the violist volunteers her cash payment app for his convenience. Distraught and distracted, he reaches into his pocket and pays for her musical services in crumpled bills as he is left with his dreams trampled. When asked what she had been looking for, his girlfriend replied, “Someone to love.” Apparently it wasn’t him. The viewer’s expectation is that this will be a story about looking for love and the travails of our hero with the slightly puckered face. It is about looking for love, just not about him. It is, we shall soon find out, about Isabel, the violist.
Isabel Hagen. Photo courtesy of Joke Zero LLC.
Isabel, a Julliard-trained violist, returns home to the quintessentially New York intellectual middle class apartment of her parents, its shelves laden with books and a grand piano dominating the living room. She and her narcissistic brother Owen, a pianist whose outside professional bona fides are obscure, live with their parents, supportive mom Julie and professional musician and music teacher father, Jack. Music is in their pores although there does seem to be a disconnect to the real world.
Isabel, like the young man in the opening, is looking for love and passion, personally and professionally. The chase is on but she seems to be running around in circles. Part of a working string quartet, they play private gigs, primarily for those with the means to have a classical quartet accompany the important moments in their lives. Isabel, always an outsider, is the quintessential observer to the lives of others.
Their quartet is quite accomplished and they have as much work as they can handle. Her best friend Christina leads their group with an iron fist, or, if you prefer, wrist. Christina is a taskmaster and judgmental, ready to criticize Isabel’s choices at the drop of a rosin bag. Although not sure of what or who she wants, Isabel is certain that she does not want her present boyfriend. When a past lover reappears, the taciturn Dave, she dives back in. Dave, devoid of emotion and affect, has no push or pull. His lack of enthusiasm for his new position as the hot new cellist at the Philharmonic is disconcerting. It’s a great gig but it doesn’t lift him from the doldrums of his darkness, a darkness that threatens to pull her with him. Still, he’s back and his accomplishments are a magnet to her lack of professional commitment. He informs her of a viola opening at the Phil and encourages her to try for it. He also invites her to play on a film score recording with him. The scene of the musicians trying to perform to the abstruse instructions of the film’s director (a hilarious Eric Bogosian) is a highlight.
The warm, perplexed Isabel is just looking for love and a purpose. She’ll try for the Philharmonic position but her attitude is defeatist and ambivalent. She’s not enthused by her chosen non-direction, playing private concerts, but neither is she passionate about her upcoming audition. Dave is hardly a possibility for long term attachment but her other choices are equally inappropriate. Isabel is the Gen Z everywoman of today, talented with many possible choices but directionless by nature. Her perpetual expression of perplexity and hopefulness mark her as the less needy in her family where an inordinate amount of time is spent stroking the ego of her brother Owen, a narcissistic pianist, who resents the little attention their parents expend on Isabel during her audition rehearsals. When not practicing at the piano for no discernable job, he sits on the sofa, cocooned by both parents as he listens to the piano concertos of Schumann and Brahms. He expresses bewilderment and resentment when Isabel asks him to turn down the recordings while she rehearses her audition piece.
Isabel Hagen and Dylan Baker. Photo courtesy of Joke Zero LLC
That’s right, not a whole lot goes on and yet, remarkably, it’s all interesting, whether it is Isabel trying to engage the morose Dave, or negotiating quartet rehearsals with the increasingly hostile Christina or teaching “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (more sophisticated than it sounds because it’s actually based on a piece by Mozart) to the six year-old daughter of a married man she is inappropriately attracted to.
Cynically one could synopsize this film as follows: Life is complicated for the 30 something Isabel. The End. But this intensely character-driven film is engaging, warm, funny and relatable. Life is seen through the lens of Isabel and why shouldn’t it be. She’s a version of your best friend, your daughter, your neighbor, your sister, the girl next door all with today’s twist of indecision.
Unlike the vast majority of films written, directed and starring the lead, this one works and has no discernible weaknesses. Isabel Hagen is a terrific actress, a fabulous musician, a formidable writer and an accomplished director who knows when to cut to the chase. This fast moving film never drags and always leaves you wanting more. Under Isabel’s steady hand, almost every character has his or her well-developed moment on screen, enough so that they inform scenes in which they are not physically present. Ling Ling Huang, Christina, is a professional violinist. Her Christina is as unlikable as she is vulnerable. Dylan Baker plays Isabel’s father with warmth and understanding, although his character lacks the kind of depth Hagen was able to write for others. Isabel’s brother Owen, in reality, Hagen’s brother and a professional pianist, is another Julliard graduate, presently teaching there as well as conducting ensembles around the world. The self-involvement of Owen is both infuriating and hilarious. One wonders how close to the bone Isabel wrote this character.
This surprising film will have you smiling, cringing and laughing at its verisimilitude to this, or any, generation of seekers of wisdom and truth; or, better, looking for love in all the wrong places, but the only ones that seem to be available.
Opening September 11 at the AMC The Grove.
Read this story on easyreadernews.com