Les soeurs Brontë

Exquisite direction, beautiful cinematography and precise performances of all the entire cast cannot prevent this film of being excessively cold. The mood tries to recreate the unexciting existences and fatalist life philosophy of the Brönte sisters, but it makes the film icy and a little dull. However, the worst of all is that you can rarely connect with such cold characters through freezing (but after all deliberate) acting. Nice effort, but failed anyway.

it is not exactly the expected biopic. and this represents its basic virtue. because, after its end, you discover than it is the best manner to present the Bronte universe. in cold images, using a magnificent cast, as fragments of memories, silence, dust and expectation. as a trip around the corners of a world who remains enigmatic. a film about a family. as a painting in Pointilist style. because all is discovered behind the shadows. because it is a poem about survive. and one of films who, after its end, grows up in yourself. this fact does it special. real special. almost like a memory. because it has the wise science to be a film about people more than about theirs books. and the result is fantastic - the people becoming theirs characters.

When the movie was released,it met mixed critical reception.The director seemed more interested in Brother Brontë and the audience was waiting for the sisters ,or should I say the actresses ,Marie -France Pisier (an intellectual thespian) ,Isabelle Huppert ,the rising star and above all ,Adjani the idol of the crowds of the era.

Objections to this costume drama remain:too few of the scenes are really potent,the actresses are too attractive (have you seen portraits of the sisters ? They were not really beauties ),nothing (or almost nothing ) deals with literary creation ,unless some (splendid) pictures of the Moor count.

It's interesting to note that the movie was cut drastically: they say almost an hour is missing .It's hard to judge a truncated version.Maybe some day ,the film as intended by Téchiné will be shown.

"Les Soeurs Brontë" is an undeniably handsome production, but also a bleak and shallow film. For at least half its length, it could be re-titled "Branwell & Co.", because he is the main character. But even when the sisters have the film to themselves, Andre Techine and his co-screenwriters have chosen to focus too much on their misery and not enough on their artistic / creative impulses and processes. If you bypass the obvious language discrepancy (at one point, one of the sisters says "we know a little French" - the entire film is in French, of course), the three female leads are well-cast, especially as sisters: Marie-France Pisier (who later became a novelist herself) outshines her two more famous co-stars on this occasion. ** out of 4.

This is the one single wonderful biography about the Brontës!

You feel, it's French: cold, realistic and authentic... Ok, and it seems to be a little boring at the beginning; and there is no one single highlight turing the whole film. But isn't it a magnum opus? I think, exactly this kind of silence gives the film its power. Listen to the words! There is almost no dialogue without a hidden allusion to poems by the Brontë-sisters.

And Isabelle Hupperts' sensitive performance is definitely outstanding.