Review: The Kreutzer Sonata
British-born director Bernard Rose is on familiar ground with The Kreutzer Sonata, a digitally captured adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Beethoven-inspired novella by the same name. The film is released this weekend in the UK, though a quick search suggests only the Apollo on Regent Street is carrying it. That may change, given time.
Most will know Bernard Rose for the urban slasher Candyman (Candyman Candyman Candyman Candyman Candyman). That was back in ’92. Since then, Rose has made a successful second career piggybacking off the two classic masters The Kreutzer Sonata draws upon. He directed Immortal Beloved, a biopic-of-sorts about Beethoven, before turning his camera upon Tolstoy. First up was Anna Karenina, a bore-draw featuring Sophie Marceau, then Ivans XTC, a vigorous modern day interpretation of The Death of Ivan Ilyich. (Somewhere in between those Rose found the need to make Snuff Movie, but we’ll leave that well alone.)
And so to The Kreutzer Sonata. Tolstoy’s novella decries the ability of sex and music to move us to foreign states of being through the story of a man who jealously kills his wife after she plays Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 (also called ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’) with a dashing and brio-istic violinist. Yes, that’s a spoiler; no, it doesn’t matter. Rose opens his adaptation with the ending, so you’d have found out soon enough anyway.
The film transplants 19th Century Russia to modern-day LA, a formula Rose tested with success in Ivans XTC. Into mansions and winebars step moody-brooding Edgar (Danny Huston), and Abby (Elisabeth Rohm), his Beverly Hills wife. Their onscreen connection is remarkable, with Rose clearly allowing great freedom in his scene-to-scene direction.
Rohm, in particular, is magnificent as the has-she-hasn’t-she spouse subjected to spiraling suspicions of adultery. The Kreutzer Sonata is Edgar’s story; he narrates the film and commands the camera. When Edgar flees to Colorado, the film follows. When Edgar wakes in a random hotel room, the camera is waiting. Abby only gets one scene to herself in the entire movie, so for The Kreutzer Sonata to work, the audience has to share Edgar’s sense of being teased and tormented by her. Like Edgar, we have to suspect her and want her; be willing to attack her fidelity and jump to its defense. Rohm accordingly manages to appear both flighty and entrapped, and her suggestive (and not so suggestive) onscreen sexuality exhibits a faultless awareness of how far she can push the role.
The bristling animalism between Edgar and Abby makes for palm-rubbing watching; their sexuality and sexual distrust is captivating and knowingly real. It works perfectly in the dramatic structure of Russian classic literature, which is nothing if not an interrogation of heightened emotions set to a soaring sense of narrative.
Rose’s imagination isn’t always up to the task of converting the novella, however. The film’s sense of time flails about without control, which makes it hard to know just how important any one scene is supposed to be at any one moment. And then there is Edgar’s voice-over, which is the scriptwriting equivalent of gaffer tape. Well, OK, I take that back: it’s too easy to rail against voice-overs. But they must at least be done carefully. Edgar’s isn’t. Early on, he finds himself in an unmarked hotel room. “I shuddered with rage and terror”, he rumbles, before turning on some cringe-porn and botching a wank. It’s a thoroughly obvious way of portraying Edgar’s propensity to slip from the terrifying to the ridiculous, and it’s completely inadequate in comparison to Abby’s sexual articulation. It also means that every time Edgar says something ominous thereafter, you expect him to reach down his pants.
Fortunately, these aberrations are not terminal. The basic story is tremendous – well, it would be. Huston and Rohm make a sexually captivating couple. And Rose’s digital camera does a good job of catching their improvisations. OK, visually The Kreutzer Sonata is nowhere near as inventive as other digital projects (Inland Empire and Festen immediately spring to mind), but the camerawork here is effective and affective enough to further the argument for the distribution of more low-fi films.
First, The Kreutzer Sonata needs to be picked up by more than just the Apollo…
Tags: 2008, anna karenina, bernard rose, candyman, danny huston, elisabeth rohm, festen, immortal beloived, inland empire, ivans xtc, sophie marceau, the kreutzer sonata
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