Tchaikovsky’s Wife
The Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov explores the passion and desperation of the Russian composer’s missus.
Now in his fifties, Kirill Serebrennikov is a Russian-born director well known both for stage work and for feature films of which Tchaikovsky's Wife is the fourth to be released in the UK. International awards further confirm his standing outside his country. Meanwhile within Russia he has increasingly become a thorn in the side of the authorities leading to state persecution including house arrest and threat of imprisonment. That he should have been subjected to politically motivated accusations is hardly surprising given that he is openly gay and critical of the Soviet annexation of Crimea in 2014. Following the lifting of a travel ban that had been imposed on him, he has now left Russia and has added to his dissident reputation by deploring the actions of Russia in Ukraine, his mother's country of origin.
But, if all this suggests that Serebrennikov is a major artist, the four films that I have seen tend to leave a mixed impression. His talent would seem to be an unruly one as is all too well illustrated by this new piece and by its immediate predecessor, 2021’s Petrov's Flu. Both films, for which he wrote the screenplays himself, illustrate his technical fluency as a director but come to seem severely over-indulgent in terms of length (in each case the running time is close to two and a half hours). Furthermore, albeit that Petrov’s Flu is far more self-evidently a weird and sometimes surreal narrative, some of its more eccentric features are echoed in the later stages of Tchaikovsky's Wife.
The title of this new work is not misleading. The story it tells is centred less on the renowned composer Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Odin Lund Biron) than on Antonina Miliukova (Alyona Mikhailova) who married him. There is a brief pre-credit scene set in 1893 at the time of Tchaikovsky’s death but the main narrative takes place in the 1870s. In 1872 Tchaikovsky is becoming an established composer but is already in his early thirties and old enough for questions to be raised as to why he has not married. Antonina is introduced to him and almost immediately is smitten by him and by the idea that her destiny could be linked to his as wife, companion and protector. Indeed, the idea takes hold of her so strongly that it becomes an obsession and in pursuing him she acts in ways not far removed from those of a modern-day stalker. Despite his claims that he is too old for her and not a passionate man, the reason why her emphatic pleas do not fall on deaf ears is due to the composer’s awareness that if he were to marry it would help to squash rumours about his homosexuality. This leads to their marriage in 1877 which astounds Tchaikovsky’s gay friends and within months leads to tensions that undermine Tchaikovsky's health and persuade him that they should live apart. Tchaikovsky’s sister Sasha (Varvara Shmykova) makes it clear to the naive Antonina that her brother is indeed gay, but she continues to see herself as the woman that he loves and who could win him round.
For a gay filmmaker one might expect that this story's prime focus would be Tchaikovsky and would consequently feature extracts from his music even if his personal situation was at the heart of the story. Instead, of that, Serebrennikov sees events through Antonina's eyes and is rewarded by a persuasive performance from Alyona Mikhailova. Even if Antonina's obsession is absurd and misguided, she is presented as somebody who, by being caught up in it, is something of a tragic figure. In the pre-credit sequence, there has been one outlandish touch when the dead composer seems to come back to life to express dismay that Antonina should still be around presenting herself as his devoted widow. Nevertheless, once past that scene the story of their relationship is presented straightforwardly with good production values and sound period sense while an astute soundtrack features a music score by Daniil Orlov as well as apt handling of natural sounds. Although references are made to Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin what we actually hear of his work is indeed very limited, but that seems appropriate in the circumstances.
For much of its length, the emphasis on Antonina renders this an unusual tale which, if not capturing any deep sense of how desperate and unrealised her life is, nevertheless holds up as a well-produced narrative. However, once Antonina is apart from Tchaikovsky the style of the film changes. She would spend the last years of her life in an asylum and in portraying her descent into that state after seeking sexual outlets elsewhere Serebrennikov opts for ambiguous images (some scenes take on a fantasy element but rather than playing as hallucinations in Antonina’s mind they suggest a filmmaker indulging himself). That is also the case when it comes to scenes of full-frontal male nudity and to a finale which offers a choreographed conclusion that carries one even further away from any sense of realism. Furthermore, despite the film’s length some details about Antonina's later life seem rather rushed. Parts of Tchaikovsky's Wife come across as able if unexceptional period drama with a degree of general appeal that one might not expect from Serebrennikov. But the last third in particular exists in its own world, one perhaps more characteristic of this filmmaker but hardly a satisfying way to end Antonina's pathetic story.
Original title: Zhena Chaikovskogo.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Alyona Mikhailova, Odin Lund Biron, Varvara Shmykova, Natalya Pavlenkova, Ekaterina Eermishina, Vladimir Mishukov, Filipp Avdeev, Gurzen Tsaturyan, Miron Fyodorov, Andrey Burkovsky, Nikita Pirozhkov.
Dir Kirill Serebrennikov, Pro Ilya Stewart, Kirill Serebrennikov, Murad Ismann and Pavel Burya, Screenplay Kirill Serebrennikov, Ph Vladislav Opelyants, Art Dir Vladislav Ogay, Ed Yuriy Karikh, Music Daniil Orlov, Costumes Dmitriy Andreev.
Hype Film/Charade Films/Logical Pictures/Bord Cadre Films/Arte France Cinéma/Sovereign Films-Sovereign Films.
145 mins. Rusia/France/Switzerland. 2022. UK Rel: 29 December 2023. Cert. 15.
