Mozart's Sister

A handsome and achingly sad period piece, a finely observed portrait of cast-aside dreams. The drama is quieter and more chaste than the similarly themed "Camille Claudel," but no less haunting.

For everything that Mozart's Sister imagines, it leaves much more up to imagination.

The film perhaps shines brightest when it depicts two telling relationships Nannerl has outside her family. The first is with Louis XV's 13-year-old daughter, Louise...The other relationship is with Louise's troubled brother, the dauphin.

The injustice of the girl's thwarted career goes only so far, though Feret pushes it in some interesting directions.

These subplots hint at what could have been, nudging the film toward biting rather than obvious commentary on the intersections of gender, sexuality, and creativity, and the costs of thwarting expression of any of them. But Féret barely explores this, and the film suffers for it.

Mozart's Sister is too often just one more rehashing of the "Aw, didn't women have it tough then" thematic that never forces the viewer to acknowledge that maybe they haven't got it as great as we'd like to think today.

As speculative storytelling goes, Mozart's Sister is ingenious but as moviemaking it's plodding.

What an interesting theme-how did the others in Mozart's family handle his talent and fame? Based on true accounts made it more alluring. But alas, once again, the French treatment is poor. It's mind boggling how the recent spate of French films get such high marks. The lead is very poor, unable to carry what should be her film. She is unconvincing at times, hard to hear, even incoherent. This character must touch me or the film is worthless. She didn't and the film is. I did do the dreaded FFWD stopping at places to see if it picked up, but no luck. The father was strong but others just fair.