B

Mozart is portrayed again on screen in Rene Feret’s new period drama, but it’s not another “Amadeus.” For one thing, he’s an eleven-year old boy in this case, and though one of the letters quoted here shows that he was even then accustomed to using earthy language, he’s portrayed as s kid who, while hardly “normal” (musically, of course, he was an astonishing prodigy), exhibits nothing more than the usual sort of spirited highjinks typical of a child of his age.

In any event, the focus of “Mozart’s Sister” is—as the title indicates—not little Wolfgang, but his older sister Nannerl, and while the script is based on an actual episode of the family’s life (a journey they made through Europe in the 1760s to showcase the boy’s musical gifts to the aristocratic patrons who would reward his performances with their patronage), characters are adjusted in terms of age and much of the narrative is invented in order to show how the girl’s opportunities to express her own talent was constrained by the social conventions of the time. It thus has a proto-feminist message to impart. But happily though the film is didactic after a fashion, it tells Nannerl’s heavily-fictionalized story with elegance and grace, while also portraying a happy, supportive family definitely ruled by an absolute patriarch—Leopold (Marc Barbe)—but one who, while stern, is obviously also loving and gentle at times, even though he insists that Nannerl know her place as a woman and cease her efforts to become a composer in her own right.

The centerpiece of the narrative is that part of the Mozarts’ odyssey that took them to the court of Louis XV and briefly to Paris again on the trip back to Vienna. During this period, the screenplay alleges, Nannerl (Marie Feret) developed a close friendship with Louise de France (Lisa Feret), the king’s youngest daughter, while ensconced at the convent where the princess and her sisters had been housed for years. Then at Versailles entered into an odd relationship with the shy, recently-widowed Dauphin (Clovis Fouin), based partially on his admiration of her musical ability but, as later becomes clear, on physical attraction as well.

The strangeness of this dalliance derives from the fact that in order to maintain it, Nannerl must pose, with the prince’s connivance, as a young man—and from the Dauphin’s peculiar fear of becoming the sexual reprobate his father is. In the end, it’s a coupling that proves impossible to maintain, and Nannerl must, in the end, give up her dreams of independence and submit to society’s (and her father’s) expectations of her, becoming a wife and housekeeper who watches her brother’s ascent from afar (though as “Amadeus” showed—also through a very fictionalized narrative—not with the professional success Leopold had hoped for). “Mozart’s Sister” thus paints a portrait not merely of a young girl’s struggle to become an artist herself at a time when that wasn’t allowed, but of the plight of male artists in trying to achieve fame and fortune in an era when their prospects were completely determined by the degree of patronage they received from the mighty—and had to scrounge to earn.

The style Feret, working co-producer and editor Fabianne Feret, has adopted for the film is similar to the stately, controlled one that Kubrick used in “Barry Lyndon,” though not as rigorously employed, and he makes expert use of the craftsmanship of production designer Veronica Fruhbrodt, costume designer Dominique Louis, the locations and the cinematography of Benjamin Echazarreta in achieving it. (The only flaw is that the ersatz period music composed by Marie-Jeanne Serero sounds a bit out of style.) He also draws performances from his own children, and the rest of the cast, that fit perfectly into his almost ritualistic, emotionally restrained scheme, with Barbe, Fouin, Delphine Chuillot (as Frau Mozart) and David Moreau (as little Wolfgang) standing out.

The cast and crew of “Mozart’s Sister” show that in many respects it was as much of a family project as the eighteenth-century journey it portrays. And the joint effort was worth it. This is a lovely, quietly affecting film that’s as much a feast for the ear as for the eye, while not ignoring the brain.