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Happily, things don't begin that way. Quite the contrary. After all, life is grand when you're a special child. Musical prodigies in training, the du Pre sisters enjoy a healthy, mutually supportive childhood, at least for starters. With Hilary the flautist and Jackie the cellist, their idyllic early lives in the 1950s revolve around local competitions and lessons. Both are deemed geniuses. But then something happens. One stops being special. While one sister continues to progress, obviously headed for fame and fortune, the other peaks, her musical career, kaput, finis.
Combining its thesis on artistic genius with a unique investigation of sibling rivalry, Hilary And Jackie explores how one child grows up to be a world class musician while the other dares to attain "ordinariness" (which by this movie's definition includes a loving husband, a gaggle of children and a picture-perfect house in the country). Although the concert star also weds, the media event marriage to a fellow performer is short on conventional bliss. Emily Watson is superb as the tortured gal who becomes an international sensation; Rachel Griffiths is serenely solid as the plain Jane sis who opts for domestic tranquillity.
Director Tucker's thoughtful interpretation of the no-holds-barred script by Frank Cottrell Boyce is high-minded without being pompous, sympathetic without being maudlin. For the most part a traditional piece of storytelling adapted from the autobiographical novel, A Genius In The Family, it unabashedly employs such old chestnuts as spinning newspaper headlines to mark the passage of time. So it is a pleasant surprise when Tucker suddenly breaks stride halfway through the doings and supplements the basic scenario with two disparate flashbacks, each depicting an alternate viewpoint to the same story. One entitled Hilary, the other Jackie, the obliquely delivered segments go behind the scenes to study character motivations heretofore not divulged. The intriguing lesson here? Why, things aren't always what they seem, of course.
Still, though extenuating circumstances are later noted, there's little room for rationalisation when petulant Jackie asks, nay, demands, to partake of her sister's delightfully devoted spouse (played with upbeat vigour by David Morrissey). The result of this scandalous request is caustically affecting, and dissects sibling rivalry to its bare essence, so to speak.
The Misses Watson and Griffiths spar with exemplary passion, making their novel love-hate relationship a highly absorbing affair full of drama and humour. The movie implies an unspoken contest and asks us to keep score: which sister is better off? The pendulum swings back and forth, first favouring Jackie, then Hilary. Until grave misfortune strikes. With that, all bets are off.
Great music taken from the recordings of the tormented prima donna herself interjects a dramatically chilling note to the proceedings. However, in a film that otherwise stands clear of clever moralising and operatic gesticulation, there is a nagging suggestion here that the enfant terrible's lack of humility has invoked the wrath of the gods. Thus, her tragic comeuppance. This awkward message doesn't ring quite as true as the more artistically subtle observations that surround it.
But what was it that made the difference? Such is the enigma at the crux of this highly engaging story. Was one child simply more talented? Did one sister just want the brass ring more than the other did? Or, more interesting yet, was there some fickle twist of fate that cast the die? Filmmaker Tucker is never so boldly pretentious as to suggest which, wisely content to lay out the possibilities and let the audience mull the answers.
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