The Cello Bow as Magic Wand

For the audience not familiar with Jacqueline du PrC, the film “Hilary and Jackie” offers a window into an exotic if anguished life. That it is based on a true story only adds to its appeal, augmenting the elements of tragedy and romance. To those well acquainted with her life, the film cannot be seen without contending with the particular difficulties associated with an analysis of a public figure. It is necessary to internally sift through a cache of established biographical fact that might or might not be represented or that has been in some way distorted. This is neither documentary nor pure biography and, like the recent film “Shine,” the story of the profoundly traumatized Australian pianist David Helfgott, it must be viewed as a work of pseudosophisticated entertainment that has been diluted for mass consumption.

The screenplay by Frank Cottrell Royce was based upon, although could more accurately be said to have been inspired by, “A Genius in the Family,” the 1997 memoir cowritten by du Pré's older sister Hilary and younger brother Piers. As constructed in collaboration with director Anand Tucker, the film deviates from the format of the book, which attempted to paint a stereoscopic picture of the renowned Jacqueline by way of an antiphonal exchange between her two siblings. In this version, Piers has been banished to the periphery; Tucker and Boyce reconfigure the tale as a series of Rashamon-like duets, presenting and then recapitulating events which are told and retold in turn from the perspective of each sister.

The saga of the sisters du Pré, as presented in the film, can be briefly recounted thus: Jacqueline and her sister Hilary are exceptionally gifted musicians. Their respective talents are encouraged and cultivated by their mother Iris, an accomplished pianist who pursued a professional concert career before her marriage, and early scenes in the movie vividly capture the alternately thrilling and painful competition between the sisters as they vie fo