Music and melancholy

FOLLOWING a spate of recent films about the ordinary lives of musicians and accompanied by a ready-to-download soundtrack, Song One comes across like one of the melancholy folk songs it features: moody, low-key and vaguely appealing.

New York is a city with a vibrant music scene - with live music venues catering to all genres and buskers on street corners doing the same, it seems. The film, written and directed by Kate Barker-Froyland, is both a romantic drama and a simple tribute to the indie music scene: performed, as it were, by a one-man band rather than a 50-piece orchestra.

Franny (Anne Hathaway) is pursuing her PhD in anthropology in faraway Morocco when her mother (Mary Steenburgen) calls with news that her brother Henry (Ben Rosenfield), a budding folk musician, lies comatose in hospital after being hit while crossing the street.