This is a twofold romance — on its surface, between two itinerant artists, but more broadly, a love letter from director Kate Barker-Froyland to New York’s vibrant live-music scene. A good portion of the film was shot in clubs across the city, from the large (Bowery Ballroom) to the teensy (Pete’s Candy Store) to the recently defunct (at least, that one scene looked a lot like Glasslands to me).

Anne Hathaway’s Franny, a writer living in Morocco, is called home to the city by her hippie mom (Mary Steenburgen) when her estranged, aspiring-musician brother Henry (Ben Rosenfield) is hit by a car and rendered comatose. After perusing his lyrics journal, she attends a concert by his idol, English folk singer James Forester (Johnny Flynn), who comes to visit Henry and ends up falling for Franny.

It’s not quite “Once,” but “Song One,” featuring original music by Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice, captures a similar, unselfconscious beauty in the way music can make sense of big, ungainly emotions — as James puts it, “for three to five whole minutes.”