They say misery loves company, but, after watching Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Tchaikovsky’s Wife”, I am wondering whether Russians love misery more than it wants. Here is a relentlessly grim, solemn, and miserable film which does not have much sense of human passion or spirit to compensate for its increasingly tedious dirge, and we are left with growing emptiness while not getting much entertainment or enlightenment about Tchaikovsky or his very, very, very unhappy wife.

According to the movie, Antonina Miliukova (Alyona Mikhaylova) had no idea about her husband’s homosexuality when she approached to him like your average groupie girl not long after encountering him at a private meeting. While Tchaikovsky (Odin Biron) simply shows some courtesy during several following private meetings between them, Antonina becomes more determined to be the wife of a great composer, and she is not deterred at all even when he flatly tells her that he is not interested in women.

In the end, after agreeing with each other that their marital relationship will be mostly platonic, Antonina and Tchaikovsky get married, and she is certainly thrilled to become Mrs. Tchaikovsky in addition to finally getting away from her domineering mother, but we already begin to see bad signs here and around them. For example, after their little wedding ceremony, they go to a party where nearly all of the guests happen to be men, and the mood is not that jolly or vivacious to say the least, while Tchaikovsky becomes too drunk to do the consummation event of their wedding night.

And things only get worse and worse during next several months for both Antonina and her husband, who still seldom touches her while preferring to hang around with his certain male friends more. When he happens to get a new work to do outside Moscow, he gladly goes away from his wife, and Antonina remains baffled and frustrated as wondering more about what she should do for really being loved by her husband.

Yes, there eventually comes a point where Antonina comes to learn about her husband’s homosexuality from several people close to her husband, but she cannot accept this at all – even when she receives a fairly nice offer any sensible woman cannot refuse under her tricky situation. She adamantly refuses to let her husband go, and she firmly sticks to her position even while letting herself having an inappropriate relationship with a lawyer representing her.

As duly observing her following downward spiral, the movie does not go that deep into what makes its heroine tick, so we only come to observe her ongoing misery and despair from the distance without much care or understanding. Is she just delusional? Is she really clinging desperately on the hope of getting finally loved by the man she has worshipped no matter what? Alyona Mikhaylova brings some fire and passion to her character, but Serevrennikove’s screenplay sadly does not provide much insight on her character, and it is certainly daunting to see her fierce efforts getting wasted from time to time.

Furthermore, Tchaikovsky himself in the film is not particularly interesting to observe either. As often limited by the flat characterization of his role, Odin Bron, who is actually an American actor, does not have much to do here, and his character eventually becomes more distant to us as being all the more absent during the last act.

In case of the soundtrack of the film, I must tell you that you will not hear that much of Tchaikovsky’s works here in this film as it sticks so much to his wife’s gradually unhinged viewpoint. Filling the resulting empty space as much as possible, the score by Daniil Orlov is certainly quite melodramatic, but I doubt whether you remember the score as much as the brief humming of one of Tchaikovsky’s famous works in the middle of the film.

At least, the movie is fairly competent in technical aspects. Cinematographer Vladislav Opelyants, who previously worked with Serebrennikove in “Petrov’s Flu” (2021), serves us a number of skillful visual moments where the passage of time is deftly illustrated in unbroken shot, and the movie is surely packed with authentic period atmosphere as required. Around the end of the story, Serebrennikove and his crew members pull off all the stops at last for a dramatic moment to remember, but, alas, that comes too late in my inconsequential opinion, and it actually made me more depressed, considering that the movie would be much more interesting if it had more of such a bold moment like that.

In conclusion, “Tchaikovsky’s Wife” has some interesting potential at first, but it only ends up being a generic biopic lacking enough human interest to hold our eyes for its overlong running time (141 minutes). Although you may admire Serebrennikove’s attempt to give a female perspective to what can be regarded as your typical great male artist drama, you will probably be quite bored by its monotonously gloomy presentation of human misery and suffering, and you may become more interested in watching Ken Russell’s Tchaikovsky biopic “The Music Lover” (1971) later. No, I have not watched that cult film yet, but I heard from others that it is not boring at least regardless of whether you like it or not, and, as a matter of fact, I really want to check it out right now after regrettably wasting 141 minutes of my life today.