'Princess Shaw' doc a feel-good piece about strangers, shared art

For every YouTuber who hits it big, there are countless others vlogging into the void, with nothing but a few page views to show for their efforts. How does someone even become Internet famous with so much competition? You can see for yourself in the emotional, captivating "Presenting Princess Shaw," a documentary about a nurse's assistant with a spectacular voice.

Samantha Montgomery spends her days in scrubs, working in a New Orleans elder-care facility. At night, she uses YouTube like a diary. Under the name Princess Shaw, she often posts videos of herself singing soulful a capella ditties of her own creation, but she also puts up goofier videos of herself dancing with her co-workers, as well as tearful confessionals about the sexual abuse she endured as a child. With braces and hair dyed bright red, she looks younger than her 38 years, but her songs reveal a past full of pain.

Her present isn't that much more promising. She may have just moved into her own apartment, but when the wheels are stolen off her car, she doesn't have the money to replace them; later, the electric company shuts off her power. On the artistic front, she performs at open-mic nights to empty houses. Her existence feels marked by loneliness.

Unbeknownst to Shaw, on the other side of the globe, a talented Israeli musician and composer has fallen in love with one of her songs. Ophir Kutiel, who goes by the name Kutiman, cobbles together YouTube videos of musicians to make beautiful new compositions.

In the film, he uses one of Shaw's songs, "Give It Up," layering in a child playing piano, a bassoonist and a trombone player; he adds an electric guitar solo and drums. He essentially gives Shaw a whole backing band for a song that - before he got ahold of it - had just 83 views.

Documentarian Ido Haar - a friend of Kutiel's - knew all this before approaching Shaw, although he told her only that he was working on a movie about YouTubers. Bouncing between Shaw's story and Kutiel's, the film lets the audience know what's about to happen - viral fame - before the singer has figured it out. That gives the movie a palpable sense of excitement, as if we're all part of a surprise party, just waiting for the guest of honor to arrive.

It's a lovely tale, even if it's not quite the Cinderella story you might expect. The documentary also brings up some interesting points about how the Internet - the land of vitriolic trolls - can draw two very different people together to create great art from odds and ends. The movie, which is composed of a lot of grainy footage and rudimentary shots, shies from issues of intellectual property ownership, however.

Shaw is a complex character and an underdog worth rooting for. She isn't necessarily using YouTube to become rich and famous, although that would be nice, given her tough life. Music is her therapy. Even when she auditions for the television competition show "The Voice," she talks about wanting to be seen.

What she needs is a witness to her pain. Well, she found one. (Or, rather, he found her.) Now she has a captive audience of moviegoers too, not to mention a remix of her song with more than 2.6 million views. All it took was a little help from a skinny stranger and the Internet.