Cannes Review: ‘Tchaikovsky’s Wife’ by Kirill Serebrennikov

To the point of insanity by Ken Russell music lovers Plunging into a dusty penthouse 52 years later, an inspiring new image of an exciting marriage to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky comes from a country that is surprisingly emotional and visually rich. Tchaikovsky’s wife.

It was directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, which was his last film. leto Y petrov fluis currently in exile after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The extravagance of the famous theater and opera director’s new work at home stems from the composer’s work on homosexual tendencies; It’s a topic that’s officially a local taboo, attracting an international audience.

By all accounts, Tchaikovsky’s intimate life was intense, complex, and probably based on his need to at least appear to be tied to tradition. The film almost instantly draws you into musical action, emotional instability, and utterly intense desire: creative inspiration from the composer and Nina Milliquora, whose sole obsession is life. To be his wife.

Long-form, rotating camera movements will follow you through countless halls, high society, and busy streets, giving you an outside visit to a place and time that is otherwise governed by the expectations of a traditional society. And no one’s intent is more focused than Nina’s, who is extraordinary in appearance and brain, but her will is stronger than anyone else.

Serebrenikov isn’t just concerned with opulent decor and interesting camera moves, as he reveals a society built on rules and protocols thanks to behavioral and scenic nuances to keep people in place. It’s not that he needs it to tell this story, but the director finds a good reason to step outside of the top-notch setting every now and then to recreate the stunning world that will be completely shattered in a few decades.

The film immerses you both in a distant world and in a world long dead, and greets you in the past, prompting considerable curiosity about both its formal and behavioral components. Tchaikovsky gives us a very useful insight into the morality of his time; He enjoyed his ensemble’s obsession with music and the arts, and particularly suffered from his solid sets.
expectations. As Serebrennikov points out, even the slightest deviation from established norms and expectations was a cause for great concern.

In any case, Nina has a strong will to marry her less trusted partner, but her faith in their union will not last long. To him marriage means everything, and to him it is a public demonstration of reconciliation that will hopefully satisfy his family and dispel some doubts. In this case, none of the desires are remotely satisfied; The environment they live in suddenly becomes toxic and the idea of ​​living together feels like hell.

The film cleverly notes the varying degrees of the disasters involved, and things just get worse as time goes on. Nina doesn’t want to talk about any breakups for her part, but she eventually becomes the “everything is fine for geniuses” version. In this sense, the expansion of the house with some strange scenes in which many bushes and very naked men intervene is also noteworthy.

What the movie can do better is to master the varying degrees of her deception in people who find it just as difficult as these two: keeping her man at all costs, chasing her muse, while maintaining her business posture. Normal. Neither is impossible, and the price of discovering it is high for both.

Odin Lund Byron, as an inspiring composer who had to suppress her complex emotions, evaluates the emotional warmth of the composer with impeccable sensitivity, while Alyona Mikhailova stands out as an impressive and attractive woman with her unique perspective on life and perspective. Terrible. Vladislav Opeliants’ cinematography rotates exactly where it should be in every moment of need.