SISI & I - Mark Reviews Movies

Sisi & I, Film Movement

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 11, 2024

History is a fickle thing, especially when it comes to the private lives of figures within it. That leaves plenty of room for speculation for storytellers, such as with Sisi & I, which tells the story of Empress Elisabeth of Austria from the perspective of her lady-in-waiting Irma Sztáray. Some is known of the queen, mostly to do with her beauty and sense of fashion and mourning over the tragic deaths of two of her children, but an increasingly reclusive life of travel, away from the royal court and public events, means much of her life amounts to rumors and assumptions.

Less, then, is known of that companion, whose existence is primarily a footnote in the empress' own tragic history. Co-writer/director Frauke Finsterwalder imagines Irma, played by Sandra Hüller in the movie, as a sort-of necessary counterpart to Elisabeth, played by Susanne Wolff. At first, Irma needs the queen in order to fulfill some meaning and purpose in her sad, lonely, and empty life. As the 19th century draws to a close, it's Elisabeth who needs her lady-in-waiting to help her find a way out of a life that seems all wealth and freedom but might be little more than a prison of custom, an inescapable marriage, and more restrictions than someone in such a position of power would seem to possess.

It's a fascinating dynamic, lost, perhaps, in Finsterwalder and co-screenwriter Christian Kracht's assumptions that the audience will know as much about Elisabeth as they do. We get a broad sense of the woman, as she attempts to hold sway over the few things in her life over which she does have control—including and especially how servants like Irma perceive and behave around her. Key details, such as some of the source of her grief and pretty much everything before Irma arrives in the picture, are overlooked, though, presumed by the filmmakers to be known qualities.

The movie doesn't really tell us much about Elisabeth, in other words, which makes some sense since the story is seen from the point of view of a person who only knows what the empress shows and tells her. By the end of the movie, though, the material demands an intimate understanding of both women and the complex bond that they share, but instead, it too often feels like a struggle to keep up with basic information about these people and this history. Indeed, the finale, which twists Elisabeth's own ending to fit what happens between her and Irma, comes across as more a hollow subversion of history than the emotional climax of this relationship.

What we do know of the women is that both have difficulty living up to societal expectations for them. Irma, a noblewoman herself, is introduced as the troublesome adult daughter of a countess (played by Sibylle Canonica). She refuses to marry, finding men repulsive in general, or to live out her life in a convent. According to her thoroughly disappointed and sometimes abusive mother, the only option remaining for Irma is to become an attendant to Elisabeth, who's currently living in isolation in an estate in Greece.

The exceptions are her women servants (and one man, who maintains the empress' schedule but is otherwise unwanted there), who must endure rigorous exercise and minimal meals to stay in Elisabeth's favor. The reward, apparently, is being as close to the queen as possible, even referring to her by her nickname "Sisi."

Irma gradually takes to these new habits, and in proving herself worthy of the empress' demands, she becomes Sisi's primary attendant. The two spend days and nights together, traveling from Greece, back to Austria, to England, and, finally, to a fateful day in Switzerland. Sisi may hold a lot of power over Irma, forcing her to change her daily behavior, but Irma, who has only known the influence of her overbearing mother, both begins to love the empress and to push back against what she sees as Sisi's deviations from social mores.

As played by Hüller, Irma is a fascinating contradiction of a character, who is drawn to the power exerted over her by the queen but is also a judgmental spoilsport when it comes to Sisi, for example, getting a tattoo from her brother-in-law Viktor (Georg Friedrich) or contemplating an affair with an English military man (played by Tom Rhys Harries), now in charge of the stables of a noble estate. In a way, it's simple jealousy on the part of the lady-in-waiting, who wants Sisi all to herself, but Hüller gets at how all of that stems from her upbringing as the insecure child of a domineering mother who never wanted her and never misses an opportunity to make that known.

As a one-sided character piece, then, the movie almost works, but it's missing the other side of this relationship for the story to truly resonate. In Sisi & I, Finsterwalder sees Sisi as more of an idea than character, setting her rebellion to anachronistic pop music and hinting at a depth of feeling that the empress must keep hidden. That leads to a half-filled core of drama.

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