If Los Angeles is the land of struggling actors languishing in food service — the sitcom Party Down plumbed this phenomenon for three seasons — NYC might be where the rest of the country’s artistically inclined go to make it big, doggedly clawing their way to excellence (or perhaps just the hard-won acceptance of their own mediocrity). Audiences have seen this play out in Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha (about a driftless 20-something dancer) and Lena Dunham’s Girls (about a driftless 20-something writer). Now Isabel Hagen, a Juilliard-trained violist, comedian, actor, and filmmaker, plays a fictionalized version of herself as a struggling musician in her debut feature film On a String.
In a way, Hagen’s Isabel is lucky — she’s a true working musician, playing in a string quartet with her best friend Christina (Ling Ling Huang) and scraping together a living through recording sessions, private tutoring, and other side hustles. Unfortunately, none of these gigs pay enough to move out of her parents’ apartment, the people she interacts with don’t know the difference between a violin and a viola, and every concert is rife with the possibility of running into a more successful classmate. Isabel isn’t exactly a newcomer to the lifestyle — her family’s love language is sitting in silence and listening to concertos at top volume. Yet it seems they’ve done little to prepare her for the grind of actually making a living with her instrument, whether that’s dealing with persistent tendonitis or interpreting the wishes of mercurial music directors.
Being a chronically broke and underemployed overachiever is familiar territory for many coming-of-age stories, and key to the film’s success is that Hagen doesn’t try to reinvent the genre. Instead, she excels at moments of wry specificity. There are many scenes of the quartet playing together, its members shooting each other glances and silently communicating over their instruments. A particularly standout sequence that exemplifies the film’s sense of humor occurs at an upscale fundraising event, in which their sheer joy and pride in playing Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik is contrasted with the absolute indifference of the reception guests. So indifferent, in fact, that when they decide to go through the piece again, no one even notices.
On a String‘s main source of tension comes from an impending audition for the New York Philharmonic, a prestigious source of steady income for musicians tired of playing “shitty background stuff” night after night. Isabel takes the audition at the urging of her ex-boyfriend, a talented but unhappy cellist named Dave (John Kroner) who has already landed a spot in the Phil and hates it. Aside from Dave and an unnamed ex who bursts into tears upon being dumped, much of Isabel’s personal life is monopolized by Carl (Frederick Weller), a dad who hires Isabel to teach his daughter violin but seems more interested in hitting on her while rehashing his youthful dreams of rock stardom.
With its naturalistic acting and meandering plot, On a String brings to mind films like 2025’s Sorry, Baby or even 2020’s Shiva, Baby (should Hagen rename her movie Viola, Baby?). And the way the quartet momentarily dips beneath the surface of other people’s lives — soundtracking people’s best and worst memories with every wedding, funeral, botched proposal, or outrageous dinner date — also carries twinges of HBO’s High Maintenance, which was a bit more surreal but still quite sweet once the smoke cleared. Isabel the character might not yet be as self-assured as Hagen the director, but it’s clear that both have talent in spades.
DIRECTOR: Isabel Hagen; CAST: Isabel Hagen, Dylan Baker, Eric Bogosian, Jamie Lee, Frederick Weller; DISTRIBUTOR: Joke Zero; IN THEATERS: September 11; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 18 min.
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