SPEAKING IN STRINGS

SPEAKING IN STRINGS (1999) ***

Reviewed 9/22/99

These days, news magazines have proliferated on television, but quantity does not make for quality and these shows have suffered as a result. The 60 Minutes, 20/20s, and Datelines have become more like the tabloidesque Entertainment Tonights, Extras, and Access Hollywoods. When Dateline does a story on People magazine's 50 most beautiful people, then we know we're not talking substance here. So I don't need exploitative melodrama in theatrical documentaries too. Unfortunately, there is plenty of it in Speaking in Strings, director-and-co-producer Paolo di Florio's biography of violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg.

Near the beginning, di Florio's camera observes Salerno-Sonnenberg trying to talk about the extreme depression she went through. As she begins breaking down, the camera immediately zooms in like a vulture, filling the screen with her face before the camera can fully focus. Yes, the close-up makes for maximum impact, but it also makes for maximum exploitation here. Nadja's tears speak for themselves. We don't need the filmmaker magnifying them for us.

Still, the documentary as a whole takes a friendly attitude toward her. Strangely, it does not at all mention her lesbianism. One of the film's aims is to cast Salerno-Sonnenberg as an aggressive, individualistic female performer. This is admirable in the face of the negative reviews she has received from the more dogmatic classical critics out there, but often Strings just makes Nadja come off as the white trash of classical music by taking note of her chain-smoking and lewd gesticulating. The film contrasts her expressiveness with the stoicism of Jascha Heifetz as if he were some masculine ideal in playing the violin. While Heifetz may be one of the all-time great violinists, there is no great demand that violinists should display his style of presentation. That said, there are music critics who abhore Salerno-Sonnenberg, and they need to get over themselves. While there are some gripes to be had (she does overdo the vibrato sometimes), she is plainly an extraordinarily talented musician.

Despite all the melodramatic background music di Florio can muster, Salerno-Sonnenberg's vivid personality comes through on its own. The film is saved solely by Salerno-Sonnenberg herself and the fluid editing by Ellen Goldwasser. Through her own words, we follow Salerno-Sonnenberg from her arrival in the United States as a Sicilian six-year old through a failed suicide attempt in 1995. Along the way, she has a traumatic show-and-tell experience at school when she brings a record of Brahm's Violin Concerto and the other kids laugh at her. She falls in love with opera under the influence of her beloved grandfather, wins a music competition at a point in her life when she was ready to give up the violin, and becomes famous for her emotive articulation on stage. She almost had to give up the violin when she accidentally sliced off part of her little finger in the kitchen, but astoundingly came back by refingering her pieces, effectively playing with three fingers instead of four, until her little finger healed.

As engrossing as Salerno-Sonnenberg's life is, I wish the film had devoted more time to her playing her music. In between life vignettes, we get only small bits of her practicing or performing. Her renditions of Tchaikovsky's old standby, Sibelius' magnificent Violin Concerto, and Shostakovich's are all riveting, but all too short. We needed more of her talking about how Sibelius used the G-string (in a harder to play position) instead of the (easier) D to get a more torturous effect.

For all its deep flaws, Speaking in Strings is still enthralling for its subject, the striking Salerno-Sonnenberg.