Mozart’s Sister
Tammy Wynette was right:
Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.
Just ask Ashley Judd. A beautiful, smart, successful
Hollywood actress, over the last two decades she has made a career of playing
strong, independent women. Seriously,
has she ever just played a dolly bird or a piece of eye candy? Even in A Dolphin Tale, it was a surprise when she wasn’t playing the
dolphin! Right now however it’s
not her acting that’s making headlines, but her puffy face. She’s all over the Internet, media
whores and ‘experts’ speculating as to whether or not she’s had work done, how
much work she’s had done, which procedures, which surgeon. Given some of the more hysterical
reports, you’d be forgiven for thinking she looked like Simon Weston with
sunburn. The truth is rather more
prosaic; she’d been ill, she’d been taking steroids as part of her treatment,
steroids make you puffy. Ashley’s
big crime was to go on TV and do an interview looking, well, normal. OK, not normal exactly. She still looked stunning. Her big crime was to give an interview
looking like a beautiful woman with water retention. But Ashley’s not just taking this media crap lying
down. She’s fighting back with a
fantastic article over at The Daily Beast decrying the “toxic misogyny’ of the
media. Shame there was no Internet
back in the 18th century to give Mozart’s Sister her chance to smash the patriarchy.
You see according to French
writer/director René Féret, Mozart’s
Sister, Maria Anna, known as
Nannerl, would have been just as great a musical genius if it hadn’t been for
those pesky sexual and social conventions making her conform to 18th
century gender roles. A talented
musician in her own right, there’s no real evidence that Nannerl was touched by
the same genius as her brother but why let that get in the way of a good
story? Focusing on Nannerl’s
teenage years, Mozart’s Sister gives us
the Mozart family touring the great courts of Europe as itinerant musicians
performing for noble families.
Always in the shadow of her younger, boy genius brother Wolfgang (David
Moreau), Nannerl (Marie Féret) yearns to compose but finds her creativity
stifled by her overbearing father Leopold (Marc Barbé) who doesn’t think it’s a girl’s place to
compose. She forms an intense
friendship (bordering on the Sapphic, but not really as they’re played by
sisters) with the 13-year-old Princess Marie Louise (Lisa Féret).
Nannerl almost has a romance with Marie Louise’s brother the Dauphin (Clovis
Fouin) who’s a big fan of her
music, Marie Louise enters a nunnery and these two proto-feminists reflect on
how different their lives would have been had they been boys.
A handsome, melancholy
period piece, the biggest problem with Mozart’s Sister is it doesn’t bring anything new to the
table. Yes, we know women had a
tough time being accepted as creative individuals in their own right in the
1760s. Hell, women have a tough
time being accepted now, but in presenting Nannerl as a feminist poster girl
for unfulfilled female talent, it’s a shame Féret cast his own daughter in the
lead role. She’s good but hardly
compelling. Which rather
undermines the central notion of the film, making you wonder if Nannerl really
was the musical genius the film suggests or merely just a good accompanist
living in the shadow of her more gifted brother?
David Watson
Written and Directed by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Genre:
Language:
French
Runtime:
2 hours
Certificate:
12a
Rating:
2/5
No comments:
Post a Comment