Movie REview

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PRESENTING PRINCESS SHAW

Written and directed by Ido Haar. Starring Samantha Montgomery, Ophir Kutiel. At Kendall Square. 80 minutes. Unrated (agony, ecstasy, veracity).

Just when you were about to give up on the Internet as a swamp full of trolls, bullies, and liars, along comes a documentary like Ido Haar’s “Presenting Princess Shaw.’’

Its tale of a lonely, marginalized, talented woman who finds fulfillment through YouTube turns any disappointment with the revolutionary medium into wonder and joy. And it almost doesn’t matter that when you think about it, it doesn’t quite add up.

Like the chronology. At some undisclosed time, Haar began filming Samantha Montgomery, an aide in a New Orleans elder care facility who pursues a frustrating dream as a singer-songwriter. She is terrific (a listener aptly compares her to Amy Winehouse) and with hauntingly eclectic, personal songs.

But she is also — like millions of other talented people denied by fortune — perpetually frustrated. (A scene in which she waits for an audition for “The Voice’’ is heartbreaking.) To console her disappointment, her loneliness, and her guilt and memories of a childhood of unimaginable cruelty, she runs her own YouTube channel — singing her songs and sharing her woes as Princess Shaw.

Meanwhile, in Israel, unbeknownst to Montgomery, Haar also records Ophir Kutiel (a.k.a. Kutiman), a famed artist (he is seen in a show at the Whitney at the beginning of the film) who puts together music videos compiled from snatches of notes from various instruments emitted by millions of performers across the Internet. Princess Shaw catches his eye, and he laboriously seeks out and stitches together an aural quilt that will both provide background music for and an MTV-like presentation of her song “Give It Up’’ that will undoubtedly draw millions of viewers. She knows nothing about this, but when she finds out he will show himself like a benefactor in a Dickens’ novel.

Haar pieces this together with mostly uncontextualized moments in Montgomery’s life — a method not unlike Kutiman’s — until the finished story emerges. And when that happens, it is one of the most moving moments in recent cinema.

But when did Haar start filming Montgomery? Apparently not long before she saw the finished video, which means that most of the anguish he observes happened after this “discovery’’ and her life remained largely unchanged despite her flash of fame.

So who is the beneficiary? Kutiman? The audience? When a movie creates a miracle, sometimes it’s best not to look behind the curtain.

???½ PRESENTING PRINCESS SHAW

Written and directed by Ido Haar. Starring Samantha Montgomery, Ophir Kutiel. At Kendall Square. 80 minutes. Unrated (agony, ecstasy, veracity).

Peter Keough can be reached at petervkeough@gmail.com.