HILARY AND JACKIE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Melodrama and beautiful music mix in
a story loosely based on the relationship of
Jacqueline and Hilary Du Pre, two sister musicians
of very different degrees of success. Well-worn
themes of sibling jealousy, the high price of fame
and success, the comparative rewards of the simple
life out of the public eye, and family tragedy
combine in Frank Cottrell Boyce's screenplay, based
on a novel by Hilary and her brother Piers. The
film is entertaining and well-produced but falls
short of its high reputation. Rating: 6 (0 to 10),
high +1 (-4 to +4)
New York Critics: 9 positive, 0 negative, 4 mixed
From those who would make great music the gods extract a heavy toll. How many times have we seen this in film? We have seen this in films from A SONG TO REMEMBER to AMADEUS, SHINE, and this season's HILARY AND JACKIE. But the latter actually may be closer to a RICH AND FAMOUS or a BEACHES in plotting. It give us the lives of two women, lifelong friends (in this case sisters) and follows one through fame and fortune and the other through the simple life, concluding at the end that celebrity is not worth its price. And it tells this story, as SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS would say, "with a little bit of sex." If this was the first film we had ever seen on these themes it would get full marks. But there have been surprisingly many similar stories. The film is supposed to be the true story of Hilary and cello master Jacqueline Du Pre, but a heavy set of disclaimers in the closing credits suggest that it may not be even that.
The film opens with the two as children with a mother (Celia Imrie) who endows both with love and a sense of wonder for music. We see her transcribing and leaving them by their beds overnight new melodies for them to discover and excitedly play in the morning. Hilary is older and more accomplished on the flute. Jacqueline can barely get a decent melody out of her cello. Hilary gets attention for her flute skills, little Jackie feels left out and determines to catch up with her sister. So her abilities have to develop at a faster rate and they continue to do so. Soon the two are recognized as award- winning musical prodigies, though now it is Hilary who is jealous of the attention paid to Jacqueline. Both girls learned from their mother the supposed bad habit of putting too much body expression into their playing. To them playing is almost a little bit of dance. Jacqueline gets a good teacher who is tolerant of the body language. Hilary's teacher is an ogre who is intolerant of her having so much fun with her playing. The teacher ruins the joy of her playing. The film splits in two paths. First it tells the story of Hilary, the quiet young woman with a famous sister. While Jacqueline travels the world with apparent disdain for her family, Hilary wistfully follows her sister's career. She meets a man, falls in love, and then has her sister re-enters her life, a different and disturbed person. The film then returns to the splitting and tells the story of Jacqueline Du Pre and why she is so unhappy with her fame and remains envious of Hilary.
It has been suggested that this film puts the Du Pre parents and Jacqueline's husband, Daniel Barenboim, in a bad light. It is true that there is something unfavorable about each of them at some point in the film. The Du Pre parents are not shown to be perfect, but then what parents are? Certainly Mrs. Du Pre is the source of the genius of her daughters. Her husband is a bit obtuse at times, but not destructively. A little more of the film's criticism is reserved for Barenboim as Jacqueline's husband, but on balance he seems to be a more devoted and more reasonable spouse than Jacqueline was. There is little that Daniel does to Jacqueline that Jacqueline has not done to Daniel first.
Jacqueline Du Pre is played by Emily Watson of BREAKING THE WAVES, whose two big films have been about sexually disturbed women. Both films have allowed her to play women who are confused and a little opaque. It is hard to say if this is really good acting or not since the women she plays are so unusual. There are far more ways to be something out of the ordinary than to be commonplace. Rachel Griffiths as Hilary may have had the more difficult role, having to seem normal but playing off her strange sister.
HILARY AND JACKIE is more melodrama than serious drama. It is not exactly what would have been expected from the positive reaction this film has been getting. But even melodrama can be done well and as such films go, this is one of the better ones. Some of the music is superlative. I rate it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews