Returning to Cannes a year after his feverish drama “Petrov’s Flu” hit the Croisette, Kirill Serebrennikov can finally attend the festival in person after recently being free from years of house arrest. Debuting in competition, his latest offering, “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” is a slow-burn historical drama that never manages to escape from being a bore despite its seemingly intriguing premise.
As opposed to channeling all of his energy into making a project entirely focused on the life and career of famed 19th-century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — “The Music Lovers” already exists for that — Serebrennikov instead, as the title suggests, puts all the attention on Antonina Miliukova, a music student who becomes fully consumed with her affections for Tchaikovsky and eventually marries him. Exploring their short-lived yet extremely toxic and disastrous marriage, the film opens in St. Petersburg circa 1893, with a continuous shot capturing the widowed Antonina (Alyona Mikhailova) attending her husband’s funeral, only for him to rise from the dead and insult their marriage and yell at the people who allowed her to view his corpse. It then jumps back to Moscow in 1871, when a young Antonina first lays eyes on Tchaikovsky (Odin Lund Biron) at a gathering and develops an intense fascination that leads to her immediate intentions on devoting her entire life to him despite claiming not to know much about him or his well-known career.
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At first, Tchaikovsky is embarrassed by and rejects her passionate pursuit of him and turns her down but eventually agrees to marry her, partly because her dowry would help him out of financial issues but also because it would allow him to shut down rumors about his sexuality. Although it’s made clear from the start that Tchaikovsky is gay — he quite literally tells Antonina that he could not love her romantically but only “as a brother” — she remains in deep denial throughout the rest of the film’s course despite the many turmoils that arise in their relationship, such as him lighting his bed on fire to stop her from having sex with him. About halfway through, the marriage reaches its breaking point and disintegrates as Tchaikovsky does everything in his power to distance himself from his wife and has his lawyers attempt to convince her to sign a divorce contract that claims he had an affair, which she obviously rejects while embarking on an affair with her lawyer.
Despite a stronger third act, “Tchaikovsky’s Wife” never manages to escape its repetitiveness, to the extent that it feels like some points are simply being mentioned multiple times while never being backed up with any further depth. From the start, Tchaikovsky appears to not be all in on the marriage and that Antonina would go to the most extreme lengths in order to remain as his wife until death do them part, as indicated by her refusal of the gossip that continues to swirl and her inability to acknowledge his lack of affection for her. The film never departs from this narrative, nor does it ever attempt to explore their complexities despite having the space to veer into territory that explores an era rife with social issues.
Aside from the stunning cinematography and beautiful score, the movie’s strength and ability to remain afloat lies entirely with Mikhailova, who gives an intense and heartbreaking performance as a self-destructive and delusional woman who chooses the wrong person to want a future with, despite being told by him that it would not be satisfying, and refuses to be accepting of the fact that he despises her and never loved him as much as she does. The film finds some stability that makes it more engaging after the sprawling first act, sidelining Biron’s Tchaikovsky in favor of fully becoming a character-driven narrative that shifts its attention on Antonina’s descent into poverty and madness.
Stretched out across 143 minutes, “Tchaikovsky’s Wife” is a revisionist drama that never manages to make up for an incredibly slow start and doesn’t pinpoint what exactly there was about Tchaikovsky that put Antonina under a spell and made her fall head over heels in love with him. With many successful technical elements that are a perfect fit for the premise, Serebrennikov certainly made an ambitious work, and perhaps there is a great movie hidden underneath this lacking final product, but its constant return to the same subjects without any further analysis becomes quickly tiring. [B-]
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