The Strange Festival 2022 – 28th edition – Logbook 4

Tchaikovsky’s Wife will have been the film of freedom for Kirill Serebrennikov, who until his previous long Petrov Fever, was under house arrest in Russia by the authorities. Leaving empty-handed at the last Cannes International Film Festival, this “period” painting is nevertheless worth much more than the Palme d’or which was awarded to Without filter, by Ruben Ostlund. The Russian and the Swedish also appeared in the Mondovision program of the 28th Strange Festival, at the Forum des Images. Back to the first, which upset us.

In the 1870s, Antonina Miliukova fell madly in love with the composer Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky at first sight. She herself could not explain it. That’s how she wants to serve him until the end of his days. However, she does not know the musical genius of this man who has become a posteriori Russian cultural heritage. She asks her aunt to introduce him to her, she begins to attend classes at the Conservatory to see him at work with his students, she writes him a letter, then two. The discreet bearded man says to himself ” irritable », « too old more inclined to calm love than to devouring passion. All the same, he can’t admit to her that he likes young men… It doesn’t take much for Tchaikovsky to let himself be convinced by Antonina. After all, a hardened bachelor is always best married to avoid rumors about him.

And from the start of the film, the fabulous Alyona Mikhailova carries within her a dignity of representation. She wanted to be “woman of”, she succeeded. It is by choosing the words that will adorn her husband’s coffin that she immediately embodies the power of the humanly realized companion: ” His wife who idolized him “. His looks hold their heads held high, but illustrate a perpetual questioning. The face betrays the suffering of an unrequited love, and at the same time the immense joy of having achieved his dream. It is enough to see her sit at the piano to understand the indestructible link which attaches her to the man of music – ultimately, the only one she can really have –. The instrument is the physical and carnal characterization of the relationship she fantasized with fervor, through the music she learned in order to tame Piotr Ilitch. During this time, the composer is absent a little, a lot, passionately, so as not to have to undergo this marital presence which oppresses him, these impossible marital duties, the silence on his sexuality which gags him. Odin Lund Biron embodies Tchaikovsky with modesty, in a kind of allegory of melancholy, such as listening to his works lets imagine. The composer of pathetic symphony is not very gifted in human relations, even with his friends – lovers? – whom he meets by chance in the presence of his wife. Antonina said nothing, although surprised by the husband’s sudden outbursts of joy. No matter how much we warn her, she still wants to get attached to her “trophy”.

Copyright Bac Films

Behind the slick costume film – the photography showcases everything so well! –, Kirill Serebrennikov demonstrates more visual restraint than in his two previous films (Leto and Petrov Fever), without losing the technical mastery that characterizes it. With him, the sequence shot shows a moment off-screen, depicts a social reality, appropriates time, and accompanies Antonina’s continuous pain. The pale candle helps to better marry the contours of a crazy chimera or a rough-hewn dream. The filmmaker tells through images the story of this woman made invisible for the simple fact of having loved the wrong person or being stubborn, in a society where no one asks the opinion of a young idealist. If the vertigo of Petrov Fever was more ostentatious in its staging, Antonina’s growing madness is felt here in a more abstract way, in a block of silence, in different symbolic lights: flies, religion, poverty, omen. Antonina even goes so far as to proudly wear having an unhappy Tchaikovsky character in her likeness in the opera. Eugene Onegin. Tatiana, like her, symbolizes this desire for love that is well and truly unfulfilled. She sends him a fiery letter, Onegin refuses his advances. However, in the stage work, Tatiana ends up marrying Prince Grémine, and leaves Eugene alone and desperate after he confesses his feelings to her, as she cannot be unfaithful to her husband. Antonina accepts taunts towards her precisely because she is Tchaikovsky, she feels alive because lying by her husband’s pen, in the ultimate pleasure of artistic proxy, and feels through Onegin revenge for his condition. She survives the shame of the real world by the triumphant honor of Tatiana. It can only be accomplished in society by embodying the contours of a fictional character, which Kirill Serebrennikov masterfully expresses through a dreamlike concluding dance scene, in a labyrinthine wandering.

Copyright Bac Films

The cleverness of the soundtrack lies in not compiling the hits by Tchaikovsky to match 25 years of suffering to the images, but rather to use short fragments of melodic lines which, superimposed, mark Antonina’s confusion. After all, the film is not about the composer, but about his wife, whose physical estrangement from her husband cannot give him the satisfaction of the music being created. The dialectic passes through the memories of musical motifs, of an ideal portrait of Piotr Ilitch. Tchaikovsky’s Wife is a film on the (re)constitution of the memory, auditory and visual, of a broken down life even before being entirely formed. What cinema can do, Serebrennikov transcends it in the brilliance of absolute sobriety, while the sum of the experiences lived by the characters alone climbs the rungs of intense emotion. We not only salute here the exceptional resilience of a mistreated or neglected woman, we are at the forefront of a vampiric love, source of remorse and destructive sadness. By the texture of the beards, hair, hands and neck, by the folds of the fabrics, the director elaborates the material and visual support of touch, for a sublime requiem to the freedom to want the unattainable, stronger than destiny itself. .

© All rights reserved. Culturopoing.com is an entirely voluntary site (Association of law 1901) and respects the copyrights, in the respect of the work of the artists whom we seek to develop. The photos visible on the site are for illustrative purposes only, not for the purpose of commercial exploitation and are not the property of Culturopoing. However, if a photograph had nevertheless escaped our control, it will be removed immediately. We count on the kindness and vigilance of each reader – anonymous, distributor, press officer, artist, photographer.
Please contact Bruno Piszczorowicz (lebornu@hotmail.com) or Olivier Rossignot (culturopoingcinema@gmail.com).