Director Rene Feret, in a beautifully painted portrait of the family Mozart, floats us back to the bewigged l8th century when the world was lit by candlelight and perfumed with music. It is not to glorify the genius of Wolfgang once again, that fabled child genius who composed at the age of 5, who produced in his life time some 600 works, who composed an opera at age 12, and engraved his name on musical history, but to look past him and reveal a tragedy. The “Sister” we speak of is his elder sister Maria Anna, nicknamed “Nannerl.” This is Nannerl’s story.

We see the Mozart family, not framed and gilded in museum paintings, but as a traveling minstrel show, a tiny carnival act composed of gifted children. The family, a “Partridge Family” of the powdered wig age, that played all the grand halls of royalty from Austria to France to England, often lived on a tiny budget and under harsh conditions.

In this story, Pere Leopold himself is a failed musician who has dedicated his life to showcasing his remarkable children around the world. Leopold is a showman to the core, a once upon a time “Mama Rose,” who lowered the ages of his children to make them seem even more precocious. We meet little Wolfgang (David Moreau) who seems to sense his genius, but still enjoys romping with his sisters, and while on the road, having pillow fights before bed.

But this is about the dreamer, the elder sister who was, according to history and this script, a gifted musician in her own right. Nannerl is stuck behind the harpsichord, to accompany her spotlighted little brother. She lives in the shadow of her sibling where she will spend her entire life never getting her fair share of glory.

At this time in history, there was no place for women in the limelight or barely light of any kind. There was no glass ceiling to break and no light at the end of the tunnel to guide them to fame on their own. Despite his love for Nannerl, her father squelched any efforts to break out, saying that it was for her own good to recede into the background.

Feret gives us a gorgeous canvass rich with details of the time. The film opens in a winter landscape, where the touring Mozart show find itself in a black and white forest, victims of a broken carriage wheel. They take refuge in a lavish convent, where some greater celebrities are visiting. This will be the three exiled daughters of French King Louis XV.

We meet Louise (Lisa Feret, the director’s 12-year-old daughter) Louise strikes up a friendship with Nannerl that grows through time, even when the child is brainwashed into the order and becomes a cloistered postulant.

Louise, learning that the Mozart clan is off to the royal family cottage at Versailles, asks Nannerl to take a note to a boy there, whom she is enamored of and will possibly never see again.

It is in the gilded glory of Versailles (the company was granted permission to film in the actual palace) where Nannerl is introduced to the young Dauphin, a troubled sickly boy who lives in the purple shadows of his decadent father, and so resents it that he finds solace in a religion.

Nannerl is brought to the Dauphin, disguised as a boy, because he is too shy to be in the presence of strange young girls. When she is asked to perform that evening, she is again forced to dress as a boy, as women were never allowed to grace the stage.

“Mozart’s Sister” is a yellowed love letter shredded at the edges, a sad Valentine of frustrated ambitions, scuttled passions and hearts’ desires. It is a tale of souls hand warped at birth, like ancient Chinese women’s feet. The rules of the royal game, and even those of the musical gypsies, are hung around each human like a velvet curtain, so as to muffle the cries of the heart.

Even in the wide and lofty gilded halls, the suffocation of the human spirit is overwhelming.

“Mozart’s Sister” is at once a love story and a tragedy. It is the story of a family shaped by ambition yet softened by love. The tragedy is that whatever musical gifts the real Nannerl might have had, and it is known that she was a talented harpsichordist, singer and violinist, all of that was washed away by the musical tsunami that was the great Wolfgang Mozart.

“Mozart’s Sister” biggest flaw, and it’s a heavy one, is in the Feret’s choice of casting his daughters in the two pivotal roles: Marie Feret, his 15-year-old, in the title role, and Lisa, his 13-year-old, as Princess Louise. This is known in the business as the “Coppola Mistake,” which refers to Francis Coppola’s casting of his daughter in “The Godfather: Part Two.” Lisa manages to win us over with her sweetness and charm. But Marie as Nannerl never seems comfortable in the rich costumes and 18th-century dialogue.

Marc Barbe and Delphine Chuillot as the elder Mozarts, breathe life into the mix. Clovis Fouin injects just the right balance of naivete and weirdness into the troubled Dauphin.

J.P. Devine is a former stage and screen actor.