Argerich, film review: Intimate, offbeat and complex portrait of an artist

(PG) Stéphanie Argerich, 100 mins

Family outing: Stéphanie Argerich, Martha Argerich, Annie Dutoit and Lyda Chen in the documentary ‘Argerich’

There is something a little voyeuristic about watching Stéphanie Argerich's confessional movie about her mother, the brilliant concert pianist Martha Argerich. As the daughter of a virtuoso musician, Stéphanie endured a peripatetic and unconventional childhood. Her mother was very loving but also busy practising and continually going on lengthy concert tours. Martha is long since separated from Stéphanie's father, the conductor and pianist Stephen Kovacevich, a humorous but slightly aloof figure in the portrait of him presented here. Stéphanie has two half-sisters.

This is a high-achieving, close-knit but dysfunctional family with its share of skeletons in closets. Making the documentary was cathartic for its director. There aren't any villains; nobody comes across badly. Stéphanie and her sisters found different tactics for negotiating their turbulent childhoods and none shows any bitterness toward Martha. She is reckoned by music critics to be one of the greatest pianists of her era. She is beautiful, impulsive, and very affectionate toward her daughters but clearly didn't spend much time making sure they did their homework.

They seem to have survived and prospered anyway. Like Katrine Boorman's film Me and Me Dad, about her relationship with her father, the film-maker John Boorman, Argerich gives a far more intimate, offbeat and complex portrait of an artist than could ever have been provided by any non family member.