Mozart's SisterInspired by Stanley Kubrick's magnificent Barry Lyndon, French writer/director Rene Feret brings a similarly languid tone and keen love of music to his handsomely mounted historical drama, which is set in 18th Century pre-revolutionary France and features scenes shot on location at Versailles.
Maria Anna Mozart ('Nannerl') is a musical child prodigy and the apple of her father's eye, until her younger brother, Wolfgang, picks up the violin and displaces her in her father's ambitions. Forbidden by her father to continue composing or to play the violin, Nannerl is relegated to the role of accompanist to her younger sibling.
Frustrated by the social conventions that thwart her own potential, Nannerl finds a measure of wish fulfilment in her friendship with Louise de France, the 13-year-old daughter of King Louis XV, and in a tender-hearted romance with the Dauphin, Louise's widowed teenage brother.
