Tchaikovsky’s Wife

‘Tchaikovsky's Wife’ tells the story of the tumultuous marriage between the famous composer and his devoted wife, whose obsessive love for her husband eventually brought ruin… A beautiful and intelligent 19th-century Russian aristocrat, Antonina Miliukova (the excellent Alena Mikhailova) can have anything she desires, but only wants to marry Pyotr Tchaikovsky, with whom she secretly falls in love when she hears his music for the first time. He agrees to a marriage to put an end to the rumours circulating about his sexuality that threaten his reputation. However, he feels nothing for Antonina and soon blames her for his misfortunes and breakdowns. Consumed by her feelings for him and by his humiliations, she is driven to the brink… ‘Russian dissident Kirill Serebrennikov arranges a feverish melodrama around the woman who suffered classical music's worst marriage… [This] is a movie that constantly dances along the knife’s edge between “hysteria” (in the most outmoded, misogynistic definition of the word) and defiance. Nowhere is that balance more obvious or more thrilling than in the opening sequence, captured in a dream-like long take that dazzles.’—Dave Ehrlich, IndieWire