(#1, #2, #3, #4)

As if that didn't provide enough of a story, Ms. du Pre also had some emotional problems even during the height of her career, and longed for a simpler life where she could be loved as a person and not for the sounds she could produce. In her loneliness and her desire to escape celebrity, she took refuge in the country home of her sister, and in that haven dared to ask her sister for the greatest gift of all - to borrow her good-natured and unaffected husband.

Pretty good for a true story, eh? Don't have to make up many embellishments to make that one work. Ms du Pre's story was told by her adoring and somewhat jealous sister, Hilary, who herself was once considered the great talent in the family before Jackie's true genius emerged. Hilary and their brother combined to write "A Genius in the Family" about their eccentric, troubled, and brilliant sibling. This book formed the basis for a film called "Hilary and Jackie".

Several professional musicians actually protested the movie when it was released, claiming that it was an inaccurate portrayal of the woman they knew professionally. Yup, a bunch of classical musicians saying "why, she was no more eccentric than any of us", and not even aware of the irony. Pardon me while I clear my throat. I read their protest letter, and it was obvious from the wording that they either never saw the movie or didn't understand the difference between a biography and a hagiography, and perhaps they were afraid that their own emotional scars would one day be so vividly exposed. The movie did show her warts, but on balance it portrayed a complex and real human being who seemed like a good person, but who had some trouble dealing with a very unusual life, as would any of us in the same situation. If she was sometimes arrogant and selfish - well, who among us is not occasionally guilty of those flaws, and who among singular geniuses is free from them?

Emily Watson was extraordinary in the lead, charming, cajoling, condescending, lewd, perhaps more than a bit dotty. Changing her personality from the heights of passion to the depths of frailty, needing no one then needing everyone, learning to convincingly affect MS, as well as fingering and bowing the cello in close ups, not just to mimic cello playing, but to mimic the very idiosyncratic style of Jacqueline du Pre. What a demanding role! In fact, I felt all of the performers were totally convincing. This film could have descended to the level of bathos in unskilled hands, but the actors kept it real. In fact, I felt like I was watching a documentary, and had to keep reminding myself they were just actors. In a rather unusual but effective narrative form, the movie tells the exact same story twice. First from the P.O.V of Jackie's family, seeing her now and then, watching how her fame changed her, wondering if she was going crazy. Then again from the beginning through Jackie's eyes, thereby casting some light on the dark corners of her behavior.

Perhaps I wouldn't like the movie so much if it were fiction, but the fact that it is all "real" makes it quite special in my book. Biopics are usually hard to make. They end up condensing too much, thereby being too superficial. They try to cover too much ground, and end up showing only the historical highlights with no real human being beneath the recitation of facts. Biopics of the recently deceased tend to become hagiography, fearing to speak ill of the dead. This picture didn't have those problems at all. It concentrated on a couple of key incidents that defined du Pre's character, tried to show the full span of her personality, and let us infer the rest. I liked it a lot.

The nudity is not very explicit. Emily Watson strips off her clothes in the forest while on her way to the store on a cold day, an incident calculated to show her emotional instability. Because there was so little, I captured many similar frames. The beauty shots vary from collage to collage, and I think I did a pretty good job on them, but be forewarned that the nude frames are very similar.

Official site for the film.

Excellent homage page to the real Jacqueline du Pre, if you are inrterested in the subject.

Now, I bullshitted my way through a literature degree by managing to figure out what a lot of ostensibly indecipherable stuff was supposed to be about, but I don't really know what this film is all about. I can explain Finnegan's Fucking Wake better than I can explain this. Near as I can figure, here is what happens:

A rock star named Pink is in the depths of despondency because his true love is unfaithful to him, and other elements of his life are not capable of filling the void caused in him by the loss. As a result of his despair, compounded by many fine recreational substances, Mr. Pink builds a wall of isolation between his mind and the real world, and descends into some inner madness. The great feeling of loss causes him to remember the similar feelings caused by loss of his father when he was a young boy, and these two deep wounds cause him to feel powerless and victimized. In his despairing dreams for example, he becomes smaller and smaller and less powerful, and the image of woman turns into a giant devouring beast. To counteract this feeling of powerlessness, he devises the ultimate power trip fantasy, in which he is crucified, and re-emerges from the dead as the eyebrowless leader of an omnipotent cult group that resembles Nazism, in which he holds ultimate power over not only his own life, but everyone else's as well.

Or, possibly it's about a trip to Switzerland in which drinks the milk from a cute female goat, eats too many chocolates, and sucks too long on an Alpenhorn, thereby causing him to have really bad dreams in which he sees too many Terry Gilliam cartoons and too many Edward Munch paintings, and so he forces everyone outside of Switzerland to dress like children in a Swiss boarding school, and learn how to yodel and poke holes in perfectly good cheese.

Or something

Jenny Wright got topless as a groupie. Whatever happened to her. Did she disappear from movies after Lawnmower Man? I could understand everyone associated with that movie banned from the biz for life, but I'm pretty sure Jeff Fahey still turns up now and then, and Pierce Brosnan is bigger than ever. Anyone know what Wright has done the past six years?

Eleanor David got completely naked as Pink's wife, but they spoiled the nudity with arty dissolves from one scene into another.

The other two files are (1) an anonymous groupie and (2) I'm not sure, maybe Eleanor David, maybe not.