Tchaikovsky’s Wife, review: a stately period piece – with an unexpected orgy-dance

Kirill Serebrennikov’s return to Cannes is a watchable if unsubtle melodrama about the composer’s ill-fated marriage to Antonina Miliukova

Kirill Serebrennikov has premiered four films at Cannes to date, though he could hardly be described as a regular presence here. The Russian dissident filmmaker has returned to the festival in person this year for the first time since his debut appearance in 2016: in the interim, he has spent almost two years under house arrest in Moscow, due to dubious fraud charges laid – and recently rescinded – by the Putin regime.

That meant he was able to walk the red carpet this evening for Tchaikovsky’s Wife, a new period drama about the disastrous marriage between the Russian composer and Antonina Miliukova, whose fan-like adoration of her husband curdles into vengeful obsession. (Their tortured union was also the subject of Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers.) The sticking point – as well it might be – is Pyotr Ilyich’s homosexuality, which he won’t discuss, and she won’t acknowledge.

The two spend evenings at louche salons where the petit-bourgeois Antonina (intensely played by Alyona Mikhailova) doesn’t think to question the presence of such anatomically frank artworks on the walls, or why all the other guests happen to be men, or why they’re dancing so closely with each other, some of them in makeup and drag.

Much as it would be nice to report that the film lived up to its director’s triumphant return, it’s unfortunately a swaggering chore: watching it feels like competing in a sort of art-house cinema Krypton Factor, with a barrage of interpretative dance interludes, unflinching full-frontal male nudity, pulverisingly bleak mise-en-scene, and writhing mental collapse. (In fact, one Super Round scene towards the end somehow manages to combine all of the above.)

There is a punchy setting-out-the-stall sequence at the beginning though, where Antonina arrives at her husband’s funeral in 1893, only for his corpse to climb out of the coffin and start berating her from the afterlife. “What was the point of this vulgar tragicomedy?” he rants, snowy beard bristling with vitriol. (In both death and life, Tchaikovsky is played by Odin Lund Biron.) Two hours and 25 minutes later, the viewer may find themselves pondering the same question.

Flashing back to 1872, we find Tchaikovsky already a rising star of the Russian classical scene, and Antonina a smitten student, desperate to make his personal acquaintance. She buys a guide to writing love letters, tracks down his personal address, and convinces him to visit her in her modest rooms, which are scrubbed beforehand to a Hammershøi-esque spartan gleam. A squirmingingly awkward reverse proposal takes place, which he politely yet firmly rebuffs, only to change his tune later for reasons the film never quite dramatically unpicks.

The early stages of their relationship are like a reverse in-joke – everyone who encounters the couple seems to be stifling a chuckle at poor Antonina’s obliviousness – until Pyotr simply goes off on a trip and never returns. A porce is dangled via his friend, the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein (Miron Fedorov), but Antonina turns it down on a point of principle, and her descent into madness – brought on by a cocktail of romantic self-delusion and the general intractability of late-19th century Russian patriarchy – swiftly follows.

Stylistically the film follows suit, with intricate single-take scenes that elide entire days in a single camera swish. But the effect is less immersive than gruelling, and leaves this breakdown film unworkably psychologically opaque.

Screening at the Cannes Film Festival. A UK release has yet to be announced