Hilary and Jackie

I dithered quite a bit on rating this film. I thought the acting was bravura. Emily Watson can do highly emotional characters like no one else. She really makes you feel the pain she's acting. (Someday I'll do a review of Breaking the Waves, which is nothing if not an emotional roller coaster ride.) I think my problem is with biopics in general. In this cinematic biography, we learn about the incredible life and horrible death of Jacqueline du Pré, the famous cellist. The film is based on one book on du Pré, written by her sister and brother, and reveals that du Pré slept with her sister's husband on a regular, and regularly condoned, basis. This is followed by her slow decline to death from MS at 42. And this is where I take issue. Biopics show a complete life and often we see the death at the end, which ends up overshadowing the themes in the life portrayed. It's clear that she was lonely and difficult and aching for something she couldn't have in her celebrity, but it's too closely connected in the film with her death. As if, because of the way she died, she is absolved from her life choices. That ended up leaving a sour taste in my mouth.

year: 1998
length: 121 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150915/combined