Criticism of ‘Tchaikovsky’s wife’, bitter love in 19th century Moscow

In ‘Tchaikovsky’s Woman’, a wedding and a funeral seem like the same thing, because love is bitter and harbors as many miseries as those hidden in the streets of Moscow at the end of the 19th century. Between the period portrait, the biopic and the romantic tragedy, the director Kirill Serebrennikov paints a somber image far removed from the musical delirium of ‘The Passion for Living’ (K. Russell, 1970). Here, the story of the Russian composer is that of his wife, Antonina Miliukova, condemned to infamy for hindering her genius and branded as a crazy nymphomaniac, a femme fatale incapable of accepting the rejection of a secretly homosexual husband.

However, it is her look –that of a superb Alyona Mikhailova– that reveals a new story of anger, shame and frustrated desires that is haunted by individual and collective ghosts. In his best film to date, Serebrennikov displays a staging that is as sober as it is forceful.and chooses the presence of an indefatigable fly as a lucid omen of his narrative: after all, flies appear when something is rotten.

For those who want to see beyond the official version of history

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DATA SHEET

Address: Kirill Serebrennikov Distribution: Alyona Mikhailova, Odin Lund Biron, Miron Fedorov, Nikita Elenev Country: Russia Year: 2022 Release date: 21–4-2023 Gender: Drama Script: Kirill Serebrennikov Duration: 143 min.

Synopsis: Russia, 19th century. Antonina Miliukova, a wealthy and brilliant young woman, marries the composer Piotr Tchaikovsky. But her love for him becomes an obsession, and the young herself is met with vehement rejection.