Dispatches from GAIFF 2022: Tchaikovsky's Wife, Pacifiction

KIRILL Sereberennikov’s Tchaikovsky’s Wife was the only Russian movie in competition during the 2022 Cannes Film Festival that took place back in May. As there remains no end in sight to the Russian-Ukraine war, organisations around the world have responded by boycotting Russian exports, including its cultural products.

In an effort to battle against this ongoing 'cancel culture' against Russian artists, GAIFF artistic director Karen Avetisyen intentionally selected this title to foster understanding with the Russian people who are equally feeling the brunt of Putin’s war.  

Tchaikovsky's Wife is exactly as the title purports it to be – following the tumultuous relationship of Russia’s most famous composer, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and his wife Antonina Miliukova. What started like a dream – two characters, Miliukova (Alyona Mikhailova) and Tchaikovsky (Odin Lund Biron) having a ‘meet-cute’ at a dinner party – turns out to be a torturous relationship that would define the rest of their lives.

Serebrennikov has a cold, calculated approach toward unravelling Miliukova’s admiration for the famed composer Tchaikovsky, and like a corkscrew tightening, it slowly turned into an obsession before ultimately spiralling into a complete breakdown of her personality. His singular focus on Miliukova throughout its runtime elevates her tragic tale of unrequited love to cosmic proportions – certainly one for the history books.

Miliukova’s paranoia is heightened through the unceasing cadence of the film's music and sound design as the camera dances around each scene, increasing the stakes and tension even further. Daniil Orlov undoubtedly leaves his fingerprint as a composer, given how much of a character the music is in this film, and the same can be said of Vladislav Opelyants’ sinuous photography, filled with handheld movements that allow flexibility within tight 19th-century production design and architecture. 

If Tchaikovsky’s Wife was a frenetic experience, I want to be washed away again by Albert Serra’s Pacifiction – a movie so distilled in its locus, that it explodes into the Big Bang the moment it has your attention. Here is a movie that demands your diligence: every moment and interaction takes longer than it needs to but like surfing a wave (a reoccurring visual motif) you get to immerse in the movie’s highs and lows. Both these movies take completely novel approaches to explicating themes of obsession and control. 

 
Pacifiction tells the story of Monsieur De Roller, a French High Commissioner posted in the island nation of Polynesia. I’ve never seen an Albert Serra film before, and I went to the screening backwards – having attended his masterclass and dialogues first. What struck me immediately was the similarity between the protagonist of Pacifiction, De Roller and Serra’s own figure, in the way they dress (sunglasses everywhere! we almost never see the character without it, even indoors) to their sense of speech and body language.  

De Roller is constantly haunted and preoccupied that he might be losing his political influence as high commissioner. In public forums, Serra often rails against the film industry and the modes in which it operates, and I wonder if not unlike De Roller, he too feels adrift in this new age of cinema where visual effects, virtual sets and other technological advances in productions dominate most of the titles making the zeitgeist.

That hypothesis aside – the colours in this film: the hues and saturation of the ocean, trees and grass is as mesmerising as experiencing them in person. The movie tests your patience and pushes its runtime to the limit, closing at 2 hours 45 minutes, but it is a confident and assured piece of work that does not feel like it overstays its welcome. – The Vibes, July 25, 2022