Sisi & I

There’s a elastic, enjoyable restlessness to all this behind-closed-court-doors bustle and bitchery, recalling less the sparse, close-up character interrogation of “Corsage” than the snippy gamesmanship of “The Favourite,” buoyed by the itchy friction between Hüller’s anxious, aspirational energy and Wolff’s cool, complacent hauteur.

Sisi & I wanders through its beautiful settings and complicated relationships with alternating ease and nervousness, showcasing surprising takes on these historical figures’ lives.

It's not the Sandra Hüller movie you might have hoped for, and Sisi & I never communicates any particular reason for us to perceive Sisi through this boring outsider's perspective. But even if the movie doesn't come to a clean point, it maintains a certain grandeur.

Frauke Finsterwalder’s take on the Empress is a lavish production favouring an accessibly middlebrow, at times almost soapy, approach.

In the end, this is a sufficiently rebellious film about women’s refusal to be forced into sandboxes fashioned by oppressing norms—about fighting for air and resisting the urge to sink into that quicksand, however beautifully decorated.