"Song One"
U.S. Dramatic
*** (three stars)
The script of writer-director Kate Barker-Froyland's romance is slight, but the music and the solid performances by Anne Hathaway and Johnny Flynn. When her musician brother Henry (Ben Rosenfield) is hit by a car and put in a coma, anthropologist Franny (Hathaway) rushes home from Morocco to sit at his bedside. Looking through Henry's diary and music, Franny finds his fandom for touring singer-songwriter James Forester (played by Flynn). Franny and James strike up a relationship, though Franny finds romance complicated by her concern from her comatose brother. The plot is a fairly simple affair, but Barker-Froyland imbues it with details of the Brooklyn music scene and a gorgeous songbook written by real-life duet Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice. Flynn is a discovery, charming and sensitive, while Hathaway brings a winsome tenderness to Franny's family dilemmas.
Sean P. Means
"Song One" screens again at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival: Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. at the Prospector Square Theatre, Park City; Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Salt Lake City; Thursday at 11:30 a.m. at the Library Center Theatre, Park City; and Friday at 11:45 a.m. at the Egyptian Theatre, Park City.