Hilary & Jackie

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Movie
German title Hilary & Jackie
Original title Hilary and Jackie
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1998
length 121 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Anand Tucker
script Frank Cottrell Boyce based on A Genius in the Family by Hilary and Piers du Pré
production Andy Paterson ,
Nicolas Kent
music Barrington Pheloung
camera David Johnson
cut Martin Walsh
occupation

Hilary & Jackie is a 1998 film directed by Anand Tucker . The film describes the complicated relationship between the cellist Jacqueline du Pré and her older sister, the flautist Hilary. He describes Jacqueline's rise to global fame, her affair with Hilary's husband and her multiple sclerosis illness .

background

Frank Cottrell Boyce , who wrote the screenplay, and director Anand Tucker first spoke for a year with numerous people who had known Jacqueline du Pré, including her siblings Hilary and Piers du Pré, who at the time were working on a biographical book about her Sisters who died early worked. After much discussion between Cottrell Boyce and Tucker about how the film should be set up, Cottrell Boyce asked, “Why don't we just show what it feels like to be Hilary and then what it feels like to be Jackie ? ”The result was a film that depicts the difficult relationship between the two sisters, which is characterized by love as well as competition, from different perspectives. While he takes Hilary's point of view at the beginning, Jackie is at the center of the action during her illness.

Hilary and Piers du Pré's book A Genius in the Family was released in late 1997, and Hilary & Jackie was released a year later. In contrast to the book, the film does not claim to reproduce the biographical facts unadulterated. Parts of the plot are made up.

action

Even as children, the sisters Hilary and Jackie are very closely connected and both show an extraordinary musical talent. Hilary is later only moderately successful as a musician and decides to start a family. Jackie soon achieved international fame in her career as a cellist. She goes on tour through Europe without finding fulfillment in it.

Although she is married to Daniel Barenboim , she visits her sister Hilary in their country house and confesses to her that she wants an affair with Hilary's husband, whom she also tries to seduce. When Jackie has a nervous breakdown, Hilary allows her sister to have an intimate encounter with her husband in the hope that this will stabilize Jackie. However, the affair complicates emotional relationships and burdens those involved. Finally, Hilary asks Jackie to leave her house.

At the age of 28, Jackie was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As the disease progresses, she loses the ability to play the cello. She finds out that her husband, who travels the world as a conductor, is having an affair with another woman. The film ends with a conciliatory visit from Hilary to her sister. On the way home, Hilary hears the news of Jackie's death on the car radio.

Awards

Emily Watson ("Best Actress") and Rachel Griffiths ("Best Supporting Actress") were both nominated for an Oscar . Emily Watson was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama and for a BAFTA Award , in which the film was nominated in a total of 5 categories, but came out empty-handed.

criticism

Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber , along with Yehudi Menuhin , Itzhak Perlman , William Pleeth , Mstislaw Rostropowitsch and Pinchas Zukerman, criticized the film as well as the book by Geschwister du Pré in a protest letter that appeared in the Times on January 20, 1999 . “This is not the Jacqueline du Pré that we knew as her friends and colleagues,” they wrote. The film distorts the tragic fate and personality of the musician. He put her affair with her sister's husband inappropriately center stage and portrayed her as selfish, spoiled and manipulative. Hilary du Pré defended the film the next day in the Guardian . She wrote that the reason for the outrage was "not too little truth, but too much honesty".

Daniel Barenboim distanced himself from the film, which Jacqueline du Pré describes as mentally unstable and also does not make her marriage appear in the best possible light, with the words: "Couldn't you wait until I was dead?"

In a review in the Spiegel it was criticized that the film “does not find a clear line in its narrative concept”. The film, designed as a differentiated relationship drama, turns into a “maudlin story of suffering”, ends as a melodrama and is all in all a soap opera . The reviewer of the world came to the same impression: The director had tried with all sorts of cinematic tricks to "give the cellist opera the soap". The work is "(not) a film about the cellist Jacqueline du Pré" and a "voyeur piece".

Web links

proof

  1. ^ Anand Tucker and Rachel Griffiths Tell All About "Hilary and Jackie" indiewire.com, Jan. 15, 1999.
  2. ↑ a b c "Hilary & Jackie": Jacqueline du Pré as a soap opera star spiegel.de, August 5, 1999.
  3. ↑ Awards and nominations
  4. ↑ Stephen Moss: Du Pré sister defends film theguardian.com, January 21, 1999.
  5. ↑ Music scandal: Holy Sinner spiegel.de, February 1, 1999.
  6. ↑ Dear little sister, may you be quiet welt.de, August 4, 1999.