Guy Lodge Film Critic Nearly 125 years after her assassination, the Empress Elisabeth of Austria — or Sisi to her enduring cultists — continues to inspire a veritable industry of portraiture in Europe: In the last year alone, a novel, two TV series (one of them a glossy Netflix affair) and two feature films have been dedicated to the tightly corseted royal icon.
Viewers outside the Continental sphere of Sisi-mania may only have registered one of those films, Marie Kreutzer’s chic, subversive anti-biopic “Corsage,” which might make the second, German director Frauke Finsterwalder’s lush, irreverent “Sisi & I,” seem to them a too-soon spare — coincidentally repeating several tricks from Kreutzer’s anachronistic playbook with its modern feminist inflections, contemporary soundtrack cues and sensational fashions, albeit with plenty of its own panache.
That unfortunate timing, combined with the absence of a Vicky Krieps-style crossover arthouse star, may cost “Sisi & I” some distributor interest outside Europe: Comparisons between the two films are unavoidable, and Finsterwalder’s hasn’t quite its immediate predecessor’s singularity of vision, though many viewers are likely to find it a better, brighter time at the movies.
On home and adjacent turf, however, where the film merely slots into an ever-expanding binder of Sisi mythology, this splendidly mounted production should comfortably connect with audiences following its Berlinale premiere — distinguished by the spotlight it throws on Countess Irma Sztáray, the Empress’s final lady-in-waiting, played with cunning and exuberance by the dependable Sandra Hüller.
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