# Hilary and Jackie (1998)

### reviewed by
James Sanford

With its story of a brilliant musician destroyed in her prime, "Hilary and Jackie" has already drawn comparisons to "Shine," the 1995 hit based on the life of pianist David Helfgott. But "Hilary" is a more accomplished and demanding film, one that doesn't find a convenient villain (like the didactic dad Armin Muller-Stahl played in "Shine") to pin cellist Jacqueline Du Pre's troubles on.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Du Pre was celebrated for her extraordinarily passionate playing and her often unruly style, marked by flying hair and grandoise gestures, or "over-emphatic body movements," as one of her early judges calls them. Emily Watson's depictions of Jackie's performances here may remind you of the way Tori Amos appears to make love to her keyboard in concert. In both cases, the player and the instrument seem to become one.

Of course, what went on off-stage was considerably more disturbing to see. Raised in a family of music-lovers, sisters Jackie and Hilary (Rachel Griffiths) were both pushed from an early age to becomeconsummate musicians, although the less outgoing Hilary - a flutist whom the film argues may have had more innate talent than her sister - eventually crumbled in the spotlight and became a wife and mother.

The teen-age Jackie was quickly sucked into a whirlwind of touring and personal appearances around the world, much to her own amazement and bewilderment; "one day I was playing, and the next I was booked up for two years," she says. Jackie sought some sort of an anchor to help stabilize her while the people around her seemed too caught up in trumpeting her latest triumphs to pay attention to her needs.

"Hilary and Jackie" is told from the sides of both siblings, although it's not one of those films in which we're shown the exact same incidents from two different viewpoints. Instead, the "Hilary" portion illuminates what Jackie's increasingly erratic behavior looked like to theoutside world while the "Jackie" segment clues us in on the private hell Jackie was going through as she tried to deal with increasing hatred of her craft and the slow deterioration of her body. For Jackie, who is reminded frequently by the people around her that her whole life is her music, there's nothing to cling to when she realizes she may not have much longer to play.

Watson, who proved in "Breaking the Waves" that she may well be today's foremost chronicler of quiet madness, is arresting, but Griffiths' far less flamboyant figure is every bit as impressive. Hilary may not have Jackie's jet-set friends or splendid London apartment, but she does have a charming, attentive husband (David Morrissey, also excellent) Jackie hungers for, and Griffiths subtly conveys Hilary's uneasy sense of serenity.

In trying to ease Jackie's stress, Hilary allows herself to be talked into doing something she doesn't want to do and the results are messy and lasting. Though Jackie's decline is sad indeed, Frank Cottrell-Boyce's enormously insightful screenplay makes the case that an even greater tragedy was the separation of two extremely close sisters who were drawn apart by circumstances far beyond their control.

    James Sanford

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