Fans of Kirill Serebrennikov’s stylistically daring works, such as his penultimate film Petrov’s Flu will be surprised by the staid formal rigors of Tchaikovsky’s Wife, at least until the very end when an unexpected sequence detached from the preceding (relative) realism sends everything into tilt, with head-scratching results. In fact the whole biopic is something of a head-scratcher thanks largely to the director’s apparent unwillingness to make any kind of statement about gendered perceptions of madness. Given how Antonina Miliukova’s mental problems have historically been linked to notions of female hysteria whereas Tchaikovsky’s struggles with depression are seen as the instability of (male) genius, it is perplexing that a director of Serebrennikov’s sensitivity should deliver a film that goes out of its way to be fair-minded yet without any acknowledgment of shifting attitudes towards mental illness. Tchaikovsky’s Wife may visually be the director’s most beautiful film, and probably his most accessible in years, yet his script studiously avoids any stab at insight and the underwhelming use of the composer’s music, in stark contrast to Ken Russell’s overheated The Music Lovers, is simply baffling.
Perhaps a key can be found in the opening title, declaring that the film “reflects the reality of the time.” Is such a proviso really necessary? Must we add such a line to every movie set in another era, for fear of discomforting audiences unable to deal with the fact that the past is as ugly as the present but sometimes in different ways? Among the realities of the current moment certain to impact the film’s reception is its nationality, given that many have been calling for a ban of all Russian productions. Serebrennikov’s well-known dissident status should quieten – but not silence – such questionable blanket cultural boycotts, and yet a special “thank you” to Roman Abramovich in the closing credits is sure to cause some grumbling. Putting that aside – it would be remiss to not mention the issue in a trade review – what will really hold back Tchaikovsky’s Wife from making a broad splash is that its superb craftsmanship isn’t wedded to an especially penetrating narrative.
The film opens immediately following Tchaikovsky’s death in 1893, when his unstable widow Antonina (Alena Mikhailova) makes a great show of mourning, leading to an amusing fantasy sequence in which the composer (Odin Biron) rises from his open casket asking “Why is she here?” Even in death he shouldn’t have been surprised, given how she dogged him from the moment they met in 1872, she an impoverished member of the gentry and he an already famed composer. She admits to him that she was utterly smitten at first sight and determined to be his wife or kill herself; he’s taken aback but realizes that a dowry in the form of potentially sellable land would come in handy and, perhaps more crucially, wedding himself to a woman would help dampen down the rumors of his homosexuality.
He tries to warn her: he claims he’s too old for that kind of passion (he was 32) and instead offers the cooler love of a brother, which she grabs assuming her total devotion will stir his heart. As for his same-sex attractions, she’s completely unaware, even after a misguided scene in which she’s the only woman at a dinner hosted by a flamboyant queen whose guests are arch male beauties all but ridiculing her naïveté. Antonina’s stifling presence drives Pyotr Ilyich to despair, leading his mentor Nikolai Rubinstein (Miron Fedorov) to propose she go away for a bit and let her husband get on with composing. In a bid to ally herself with his family she goes to Kamenka, near Kyiv, where his harried sister Alexandra tells Antonina what most people in Tchaikovsky’s circle already know: he’s gay, and what’s more she’s become repellent to him.
A significant amount of the film is taken up with potential divorce proceedings, urged on by her lawyer and lover Shykov (Vladimir Mishukov), but out of a maniacal loyalty to her husband (in heart if not in body), she refuses to accuse him of infidelity, the only grounds legally allowed in Imperial Russia. Divorce procedure, also referenced in that opening title about the reality of the times, is an odd focus offering nothing substantive about Antonina, Pyotr Ilyich, or their fraught relationship, and it’s unclear why Serebrennikov felt the need to focus on this aspect. Potentially more interesting is how the script tries to address her sexual needs – according to contemporaries, Antonina incessantly boasted about all the men who wanted to bed her – yet a scene in which she’s offered a delectable assortment of nude male pulchritude is starkly homoerotic, and her relationship with the tubercular Shykov is made ridiculous by a risible masturbation sequence.
History, like the maestro himself, has not been kind to Antonina, and while it’s true she has few partisans, it seems likely the poor woman was indeed deeply unbalanced. Possessive, lacking a firm grasp of reality and prone to closing herself off from anything she didn’t want to hear, she was a sad figure ill-treated by a husband who should never have allowed himself to get into such a situation. Serebrennikov aims to treat them both with respect, yet Tchaikovsky comes off as a moody egotist with no regard for the woman he wed (most likely true, and curiously Nadezhda von Meck doesn’t even get a passing mention), while Antonina is defined by her hysteria. It’s over 40 years since The Madwoman in the Attic challenged notions of how female madness is depicted, and though Tchaikovsky’s wife was certainly deeply disturbed, we want some social context apart from a termagant mother and an imbalanced brain. For all its feverishness, Russell’s The Music Lovers offers a more nominal notion of the ill-suited couple’s relationship than Serebrennikov’s far cooler work.
The real standout, apart from an excellent Mikhailova as Antonina, is the gracefully choreographed camerawork by Serebrennikov’s regular d.p. Vladislav Opelyants, whose elegant control and gliding movements provide a richness of atmosphere even when the script falters. Clearly influenced by the paintings of Gustave Caillebotte as well as Russian and Nordic 19th century artists, his lighting of the largely muted tonalities is a delight for the eye, culminating in a glorious drone shot over a flooded birch forest. Although occasional excerpts from some of Tchaikovsky’s lesser works are used on the soundtrack, his music is oddly underused.
Director: Kirill Serebrennikov
Screenplay: Kirill Serebrennikov
Cast: Alena Mikhailova, Odin Biron, Miron Fedorov, Vladimir Mishukov, Ekaterina Ermishina, Elenev Nikita, Philipp Avdeev, Andrey Burkovskiy
Producers: Ilya Stewart, Kirill Serebrennikov, Murad Osmann, Pavel Burya.
Executive producers: Mike Goodridge, Elizaveta Chalenko
Co-producers: Ilya Dzhincharadze, Carole Baraton, Pierre Mazars, Yohann Comte, Céline Dornier, Frédéric Fiore, Olivier Père, Rémi Burah, Dan Wechsler, Jamal Zeinal-Zade, Andreas Roald
Cinematography: Vladislav Opelyants
Production designer: Vladislav Ogay
Costume designers: Dmitriy Andreev, Alexandra Sachkova, Natalia Volkova
Editing: Yuriy Karikh
Music: Daniil Orlov
Sound: Boris Voyt, Vasiliy Fedorov
Production companies: Hype Film (Russia), Kinoprime (Russia), Charades Productions (France), Logical Pictures (France), Bord Cadre (Switzerland), Art France Cinéma (France)
World sales: Charades
Venue: Cannes (Competition)
In Russian, French
143 minutes
