FFVP review-Hilary & Jackie

HILARY & JACKIE

(based on the book - "A Genius in the Family"- by Hilary and Piers Du Pres)

The Du Pres sisters have everything - a doting mother - a providing father - and musical talent to spare. Hilary(Rachel Griffith) plays the flute, Jackie(Emily Watson), the cello. When Hilary excels, Jackie catches up. She has to so she and Hilary can keep their promise to share everything - fifty, fifty. Eventually her talent surpasses Hilary’s - a sign of childhood’s end. As they approach adulthood, Hilary shuns the spotlight, while Jackie can’t escape it. Hilary becomes a mother and housewife, Jackie - a world renowned concert artist. The price of her fame is isolation - the one thing she fears most. She is ill prepared to face the world alone. And yet that is just what she must do in life, and in death. As adults, Hilary’s and Jackie’s worlds couldn’t be more different. Yet both are driven to opposite poles by the same forces - the desire to please their parents, and the fostering of their talent. This is the essence of "Hilary and Jackie."

Unlike most sugar coated disease of the week movies, "Hilary and Jackie" is an uncompromising look at the familial bonds that molded the personalities of the real life sisters, Hilary and Jackie Du Pres. Their mother, as loving as she is, never teaches the girls how to be independent. She herds them from one practice session to the next, goading one to be as good as the other. Like most parents, she lives vicariously through her children. Her disappointment at not being chosen as a piano accompanist for Jackie’s debut hints at her own possible ambition. Their father is shown to be a bigot in his attitude toward a section of the city where a new Truffaut movie is playing. Later he is forced to bite his stiff British upper lip when Jackie marries outside her ‘class’ as he defines it.

Eventually, the girls’ hermetic childhood leaves Hilary pining for the security of heart and hearth, while Jackie is held captive by her talent. This is never so telling as when she literally disappears from her sister’s side in the dead of night to make a concert date on the continent. Hilary withdraws from the professional musician’s life when she falls in love with Kiffer Finzi, played with gusto by David Morrissey. At first Jackie is conspicuously absent from everyone’s life. There are bizarre momentary reminders of her travels, a marriage to the up and coming orchestra conductor, Daniel Barenbohm(James Frain), and unannounced visits that end years later with Jackie on the verge of a breakdown and a strange desire to share in Hilary’s life - fifty-fifty.

"Hilary and Jackie" suddenly flashes back to Jackie’s first European tour to detail Jackie’s story in parallel time to Hilary’s in a manner reminiscent of Thornton Wilder’s "Our Town." Jackie is cast adrift in foreign cities, cut off from human contact by language and custom. Her only means of communication is her music. Director Anand Tucker brilliantly expresses Jackie’s dizzying state of mind through the playful images of a cello that looms in the foreground leading her from one concert to the next like the proverbial ring in the nose, and a set of rotating, clacking letters from bulletin boards that whir her through one city after another. Her last stop - England! - with the comforting sounds and smells of home - and Hilary - to share the tales of her adventures! She learns about Kiffer. Barenbohm, a celebrity in his own right, becomes the crutch for Jackie’s needs on the concert stage and in marriage. Barenbohm cannot imagine life without music. Jackie can. It was always the means to an end - a way to have fun - to express herself. She wants to be loved for herself, not just her talent. When she finally comes to terms with her musical gift, she is cut down by Multiple Sclerosis. Once again, Anand Tucker uses abstract set pieces to accentuate Jackie’s mental state with great effect. Her physical therapy on a sterile work out table is set against large swatches of vibrant colors with her husband at her side. Later she is alone. His professional commitments come first. Once in a while Jackie appears in public to boost her morale, but for the most part, she suffers in silence until she is hidden away. Dying is the one thing she learns to do alone.

"Hilary and Jackie" has a complexity that left me thinking about it long after the movie was over. The roots of Jackie’s feelings toward her parents are evidenced in small vignettes sprinkled throughout the film from their aloof behavior to their favoritism of the more predictable Hilary. Ultimately, the bond that held the sisters together had as much to do with Hilary’s own need to nurture as it did with her Jackie’s need to be assured of her love. What they give and take from each other is played out in the obvious plot dynamics of the story. The subtleties of the script, the elliptical structure of the story, and the nuances of the performers that contribute to the psychological density of "Hilary and Jackie" act on a much more subliminal level. I was left with an overwhelming sense of loss.

Postscript: Jacqueline Du Pres is famous for her rendition of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. Sections are used throughout "Hilary and Jackie" and issued in its entirety on the soundtrack recording.