Mozart’s Sister: A Music Room of One’s Own

Leopold Mozart was not much of a nurturer, so maybe the family really had musical genes. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s prodigious musical talents are well documented and dramatized. However, there is reason to believe his older sister Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart was also a precocious performer and composer in her own right. There simply was not a socially acceptable musical outlet for a proper young woman in Eighteenth Century European society, as viewers learn in no uncertain terms in René Féret’s Mozart’s Sister (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Nannerl Mozart misses playing violin. It just was not considered appropriate for the fairer sex in her era. Instead, she is relegated to accompanying her brother on piano, harpsichord, and vocals. Old Leopold has already identified Wolfgang as the family’s future, capitalizing on the novelty of his youth (though for Féret, he is only a minor supporting character). By contrast, his daughter is getting a bit too old to astound the crowned heads of Europe. She still proves useful though when she befriends Louise de France, one of Louis XV’s surplus daughters.

Begging off life on the road with her family, the Mozart daughter’s friendship with the cloistered princess also brings her into the orbit of the Dauphin, the brother Louise had yet to meet. A music lover completely lacking talent himself, the Dauphin gave her a focus for her unfulfilled musical ambitions, essentially using her as his ghost-writer.

Starting with some of Leopold Mozart’s letters and filling in the considerable gaps with some generous guess work, Féret vividly conveys the erratic hand-to-mouth nature of the Mozart family’s itinerant lifestyle. Yet, perhaps his most compelling invention is the assuredly fictional relationship between the Dauphin and the unheralded Mozart. While Féret’s sympathies clearly and consistently lie with Nannerl Mozart and her frustrated creative drive, his narrative arc is oddly flat. Frankly, the rather anti-climatic ending will leave many viewers asking: “is that really it?”

With several scenes shot on-location at Versailles, Sister recreates the world of the mid 1700’s with appropriate stately grandeur. To her credit, Marie-Jeanne Séréro convincingly rises to the challenge of composing Nannerl Mozart’s compositions, but the prominence of the harpsichord might challenge the ears of some causal classical listeners (those who never range far from canonical Beethoven and W.A. Mozart).

While undeniably poised, Marie Féret (yes, the director’s daughter) comes across a bit bloodless and reserved as Mozart. In contrast, his younger daughter Lisa is completely engaging and even rather haunting as the Princess Louise. Resembling something of a French Joaquin Phoenix, Clovis Fouin also makes a strange but strong impression as the royally flawed Dauphin.

An exquisite period production, but a frosty affair as a character drama, Sister relies heavily on its sights and sounds. Like Mozart’s sister, the Féret sisters are quite gifted, but a more muscular narrative would have better served their efforts. Lovely to look at, but strictly an interesting supplement rather than a serious challenger to Miloš Forman’s Amadeus, Mozart’s Sister opens this Friday (8/19) in New York at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center uptown and the Cinema Village downtown.

An Affair to Remember: Chanel and Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky’s music was truly revolutionary in every sense of the word. Not surprisingly, it was banned by the Soviets for two decades. Though his monumental Rite of Spring scandalized 1913 France as well, he reached a few receptive ears, including those of fashion icon Coco Chanel, who becomes his patron and lover in Jan Kounen’s Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (trailer here), opening this Friday in New York.

It was a glorious disaster. Though mild by ’68 standards, a legitimate riot broke out during the premiere of Rite. Living in exile, Stravinsky’s situation was precarious, yet he remained defiant in the face of public scorn. By this time, Chanel was well established as an independent woman of means. Responding to something in Stravinsky’s music, she houses the composer, his consumptive wife Catherine, and their two sons in her country villa. Stravinsky is now free to work without the pressure of financial concerns. However, the growing attraction between the composer and the designer (particularly pronounced on his part) puts new stress on the Stravinsky family.

While Kounen occasionally lets the proceedings temporarily slide into melodrama, he nails the big scenes. His opening sequences brilliantly recreate the infamous debut of Rite. Witnessing such fervent responses to music, both positive and mostly negative, is surprisingly good cinema. It underscores the idea that art and music matter. Such issues are important to the film, as when a spurned Stravinsky belittles the legitimacy of Chanel’s creative endeavors. However, Kounen more than gives the fashion legend her proper due, most effectively dramatizing the development of her first signature fragrance.

CC&IS is the second big screen treatment of Coco Chanel’s life from Sony Classics in less than a year, but it is clearly the greater of the two. While it might sound superficial, Anna Mouglalis simply looks better in the role, with her height and natural elegance better suited to Chanel’s style than the more diminutive Audrey Tatou in Anne Fontaine’s Coco Before Chanel. She is also more successful expressing the burning drive beneath Chanel’s severe exterior. In addition, admirers of Chanel will most likely better appreciate the period in her life chronicled in Kounen’s film than that of its predecessor. While during most of Before, Chanel is a kept woman, in CC&IS, she is essentially the one doing the keeping.

As the recipient of Chanel’s hospitality, Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen is a bit of a cold fish, but he has some nice moments conveying the passion of the creative process. Indeed, Stravinsky’s music is shrewdly integrated into the film, while Oscar winning composer Gabriel Yared deserves credit just for accepting the intimidating assignment of scoring a film about Stravinsky.

The superior Chanel biopic and one of the better films about classical music in general, CC&IS is a handsome looking prestige production. Well worth seeing for its elegant style and Mouglalis’s pitch perfect performance, Kounen’s Chanel film opens this Friday (6/11) in New York at the Paris Theatre and the Angelika Film Center.