Mi hermana y yo

Huppert plays a monster. Well not a villain, but there are actual villains in the movies that I've found easier to watch. Only the light French-style early Modern musical score tips the viewer that this story won't end in tragedy (a murder or suicide, say). So the viewer indeed knows where the movie is going from the music, that self-awareness will ultimately blossom and this beast will finally humanize herself.

But that said, I felt that the ending wasn't earned. Did they tack on a happy ending for improved world-of-mouth just to sell tickets? It comes so out-of-nowhere that you can't even call it a deus ex machina. In real life you don't get to cross the bridges you burn just because you have had a change of heart. Hurting people matters It's not just not realism, the ending is sugar-coated wish-fulfillment for audience approval.

The script is mostly very light on back story, but there is an emphasis on the unseen mother's alcoholism, Martine's intension of abstinence, and what a mean drunk she turns into when she falls off the wagon. So I read this as one of the movie's themes, namely the perpetual anger of recovering alcoholic, so, jilted by the lover alcohol and now unable to feel human love (whether for spouse, child, sister or mother). This may seem like a very narrow reading, but the script supports it, and if you buy my reading, you can use it as handle for finding some sympathy for the otherwise utterly irredeemable Martine.

Catherine Frot really steals the picture. Just what she does with her face alone to show her connection to the music while listening ,at the theater, to the first few bars of an opera is acting gold of the highest merit.