Mozart's Sister
Music Box Films | Release Date: August 19, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
71
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 22 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
The Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenAug 18, 2011
A handsome and achingly sad period piece, a finely observed portrait of cast-aside dreams. The drama is quieter and more chaste than the similarly themed "Camille Claudel," but no less haunting. Read full review
90
VarietyRonnie ScheibAug 15, 2011
Feminist without the arrogance of 20-20 hindsight, vividly precise in its depiction of 18th-century pre-revolutionary France (the filmmakers were allowed to shoot inside Versailles), alive with exuberantly thesped personages and awash in the joy and power of music, the picture is a stunner. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchSarah Bryan MillerSep 30, 2011
The film catches the Mozarts' true personalities in a way that Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus" never approaches. In one scene, the siblings playfully improvise musical variations, and then joyfully rush to the clavier to write them down: There is the essence of Mozart. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertSep 7, 2011
The movie is an uncommonly knowledgeable portrait of the way musical gifts could lift people of ordinary backgrounds into high circles. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnAug 16, 2011
For everything that Mozart's Sister imagines, it leaves much more up to imagination. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternAug 18, 2011
A work of fiction, Mr. Féret's film is ardent in its inventions, modest in scale, playful in its speculations about Nannerl's influence on her brother's music, and graced by the filmmaker's daughter, Marie Féret, in the title role. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaNov 3, 2011
The music, of course, resonates. And so does this exquisite heartbreaker of a story. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoSep 15, 2011
The film perhaps shines brightest when it depicts two telling relationships Nannerl has outside her family. The first is with Louis XV's 13-year-old daughter, Louise...The other relationship is with Louise's troubled brother, the dauphin. Read full review
75
New York PostV.A. MusettoAug 19, 2011
Mozart's Sister had a much smaller budget than "Amadeus," but Féret makes good use of his resources, even getting to film in the splendid halls of Versailles. The cast is excellent, be they relatives of the director or not. And the music, though not by a Mozart, is beautiful. Read full review
75
NPRBob MondelloAug 18, 2011
Mozart's Sister is consequently gorgeous, with candlelit shots looking like old master paintings - a fine match for music that takes your breath away. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayAug 17, 2011
What's missing from Mozart's Sister, though, is the kind of fervor that made "Amadeus" so memorable. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesSep 8, 2011
The injustice of the girl's thwarted career goes only so far, though Feret pushes it in some interesting directions. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleAug 19, 2011
The object isn't to stir you into what-if feminist outrage so much as to let a culturally magnificent era's societal inequalities act as a dissonant countermelody to a famous artist's biography. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 18, 2011
Nannerl, the subject of at least three novels also titled "Mozart's Sister," is in this film meant to be something more than a chapter in her brother's biography though it's not exactly clear what. Somewhat frustratingly if reasonably, Mr. Féret never settles on whether she was a genius, a martyr, a feminist cause, a disappointed daughter, a resigned woman or all of the above. Read full review
70
Village VoiceErnest HardyAug 16, 2011
These subplots hint at what could have been, nudging the film toward biting rather than obvious commentary on the intersections of gender, sexuality, and creativity, and the costs of thwarting expression of any of them. But Féret barely explores this, and the film suffers for it. Read full review
70
Boxoffice MagazineEd SchiedAug 15, 2011
Writer/director René Féret tells the absorbing and ultimately tragic story of this gifted young woman now forgotten by history. Read full review
63
Washington PostStephanie MerryNov 3, 2011
Mozart's Sister feels like a rococo reverie. The film was shot inside Versailles, which borders on the best sensory overload when you factor in the gorgeous classical soundtrack. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 6, 2011
It's a lovely dream that, in the end, feels too dreamlike. The director coaxes an intentionally passive performance from his daughter Marie, so that Nannerl's eventual waking to cold patriarchal reality doesn't sting as it might. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerAug 15, 2011
Mozart's Sister is too often just one more rehashing of the "Aw, didn't women have it tough then" thematic that never forces the viewer to acknowledge that maybe they haven't got it as great as we'd like to think today. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanAug 19, 2011
Marie Féret struggles to hold the film's center throughout, but there's more than enough to distract us, from transcendent music to sumptuous costumes and sets. Read full review
60
Time OutDavid FearAug 16, 2011
The film's dogged repetitions regarding Nannerl's real-life raw deal dilute the reparative nature of the story after a while, and not even the movie's grainy, retro–art-cinema look can keep viewers from gradually tuning out. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerAug 20, 2011
As speculative storytelling goes, Mozart's Sister is ingenious but as moviemaking it's plodding. Read full review
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