Historically fascinating and musically enchanting, this dramatic amalgam of research and artistic licence takes us on the road with the Mozart family in the 1760s as the ambitious patriarch Leopold (Marc Barbé) hauls his prodigious son Wolfgang (David Moreau) around the courts of Europe, presenting him in a duo with his older sister Nannerl.
They’re all dependent on the caprices of aristocratic generosity, though Nannerl (Marie Féret, the director’s daughter) has it worst of all. Forbidden from playing the violin, a boy’s instrument, she’s also excluded from the composition lessons papa gives Wolfie.
Gilded authentic locations and restrained performances provide an effective setting for Féret’s theory about Nannerl’s talent being stifled by conventions. True, this slightly ploddy and overlong offering gets the key point across early on and coasts from there, but Marie-Jeanne Séréro’s lovely speculative score makes Nannerl’s embattled creativity sing out after all these years.