Hilary and Jackie (1998) on Netflix
Hilary du Pré plays the flute, her sister Jackie the cello, and their mother Iris pushes both toward musical greatness. Jackie becomes the famous one, while Hilary marries Kiffer Finzi.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.3/1011,351 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1960s London, Derek and Iris du Pré raise two daughters to play music. Their mother instructs them from childhood, Hilary on the flute and Jackie on the cello. Jackie resists practice as a girl yet grows into a virtuoso, and her career soon carries her across Europe. Hilary stays in London with her parents and her brother Piers, works at her studies at the Royal Academy of Music, and starts playing in a community orchestra. She meets a gregarious fellow student, Christopher Finzi, known as Kiffer, and the two become a couple. When Jackie comes home from touring in Moscow, she asks Hilary to share a flat with her.
Cast
- Auriol Evansas Young Jackie
- Keylee Jade Flandersas Young Hilary (as Keeley Flanders)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hilary and Jackie (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was a critical success and received two Academy Award nominations, but it ignited a furore, especially in London, center of du Pre's performing life: a group of her closest colleagues, including fellow cellists Mstislav Rostropovich and Julian Lloyd Webber, sent a "bristling" letter to The Times in February 1999.
- Daniel Barenboim's response to the film was a single question: "Couldn't they have waited until I was dead?" Guitarist John Williams, a friend of Jacqueline du Pre's, told The Observer the film was "macabre" and "sick", adding: "My friend Jackie has been betrayed".
- Hilary du Pre defended the film in The Guardian: "At first I could not understand why people didn't believe my story because I had set out to tell the whole truth." She added that Jackie would have respected what she had done, and that if she had gone for half-measures her sister would have torn it up.
- Hilary du Pre also said of the film's critics: "When you love someone, you love the whole of them. Those who are against the film want to look only at the pieces of Jackie's life that they accept... Jackie would have absolutely loved it."
- Jacqueline du Pre's cello playing in the movie was performed by Caroline Dale, whose playing was synchronised to Emily Watson's movements on screen.
- The film drew condemnation from several personal friends of Jacqueline, who said it distorted details of her life, while Hilary publicly defended it as her and Piers's version of the family story; both Griffiths and Watson were nominated for Academy Awards.
