Frederick Wiseman Archives

Review: ‘Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,’ starring Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson, Annabelle Lengronne, Liz Crowther, Alan Fairbairn and Lola Peploe

May 26, 2025

by Carla Hay

Charlie Anson and Camille Rutherford in “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

Directed by Laura Piani

French with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Paris and in England, the comedy film “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: French introvert Agathe Robinson, a bookstore employee who is a big fan of author Jane Austen, gets unexpectedly accepted into a prestigious writers’ retreat in England, where she struggles with self-doubt and her feelings for her male best friend in Paris and the English literature professor whose parents founded the retreat.

Culture Audience: “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in European romantic movies that are made in the spirit of Jane Austen novels.

Pablo Pauly and Camille Rutherford in “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

When a romance-themed movie has the name Jane Austen in the title, you can probably predict how the movie is going to end. “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” is very shallow in some areas, but Camille Rutherford’s magnetic performance carries this uneven comedy. The supporting actors also give entertaining performances, but your interest in watching the entire movie will come largely from whether or not you care about what happens to the protagonist portrayed by Rutherford.

Written and directed by Laura Piani, “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” is her feature-film directorial debut. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” was filmed in France and has a very European sensibility when it comes to comedy. The pace is slower than a typical American romantic comedy. And the emphasis is on comedy found in situations rather than filling the movie with jokes and hilarious people.

“Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” begins by showing protagonist Agathe Robinson (played by Rutherford) at one of the few places where she feels at home and at ease: a Shakespeare & Company bookstore where she works in Paris. Agathe, who is in her mid-to-late-20s, is a sales clerk who has a passion for the work of 1800s British novelist Jane Austen (“Sense and Sensibility” is Agathe’s favorite Austen book) and generally has a preference for romance novels.

As shown in the movie’s opening scene, when Agathe is alone in the bookstore (such as when the store is closed to customers), she feels like a lighthearted kid in a playground. There’s a mirror in the store that has become a message board where customers have placed hand-written Post-It notes to strangers they’ve seen in the store and want to meet in person but were too shy to approach in the store. Agathe likes to read these notes, which remind her that she’s not the only lonely heart looking for love.

In her personal life, Agathe is a bachelorette who has self-esteem issues. She’s an introvert who has become pessimistic about finding true love. She dislikes the modern dating scene and would rather have a traditional courtship instead of a bunch of casual boyfriends. Agathe, who likes to travel by bicycle, wonders to herself if she was born in the wrong century.

Would she have been happier in Jane Austen’s era, when gender roles for dating and marriage were more defined but also much stricter? It’s later revealed that Agathe has been celibate for the past two years, but she doesn’t consider herself to be an uptight prude. She considers herself to be very selective.

Agathe is an aspiring writer who has yet to finish her first novel. She’s insecure about her skills as a writer. In a creative writing class that Agathe takes in her spare time, the teacher gives her criticism for writing generic short stories. This criticism affects Agathe and makes her doubt if she’s got the talent to be a professional writer.

Agathe lives a quiet and simple life in an apartment with her older sister Mona (played by Alice Butaud), who is a single mother to a 6-year-old boy named Tom (played by Roman Angel), who is adorable and friendly. Tom has noticed that Agathe hasn’t been dating anyone because he says remarks early one morning that there’s a man in Mona’s bed, but Agathe hasn’t had a man in her bed in a long time. Mona’s attitude toward dating is the opposite of Agathe’s, but the two sisters respect each other’s choices and don’t meddle or lecture each other about their love lives.

An early scene in the movie shows that Mona is somewhat dismissive of a man named Gabriel (played by Pierre-François Garel), who’s spent the night with Mona and who’s awkwardly hanging around the next morning to have breakfast with the family. Mona doesn’t care to remember Gabriel’s name and keeps calling him Raphaël, even after he politely corrects her. Mona treats Gabriel as a one-night stand she doesn’t want to see anymore, but Gabriel can’t take the hint and acts like he hopes that he and Mona will continue to see each other. Gabriel is never seen again in the movie.

Mona’s best friend (and apparently, her only friend) is Félix (played by Pablo Pauly), who is a sales clerk that the same Shakespeare & Co. bookstore where Agathe works. Félix is a carefree bachelor who openly dates many women and tells his lovers that he doesn’t want a commitment with any of them. He’s not particularly good-looking, but he has a confident and flirtatious way about him that some women find attractive. Félix is a heartbreaker, but he’s not intentionally cruel about it.

Félix flirts with Agathe too, but she refuses to let their relationship be anything other than a close platonic friendship. Agathe has let it be known to Félix that she doesn’t want to be one of his many sexual conquests. He accepts this decision, but he still flirts with her in the hope that Agathe might change her mind.

Félix thinks Agathe is a more talented writer than Agathe thinks she is. He secretly submitted her work to a prestigious writers’ retreat called the Jane Austen Residency, which selects less than five writers and meets for two weeks at a mansion in England. It’s an all-expenses-paid-trip for those chosen for this retreat. Agathe gets accepted into the retreat but is appalled and frightened when Félix tells her the news because Agathe doesn’t think she’s good enough to be at this residency.

With just a few days left to go before the retreat begins, Agathe is still having doubts about whether or not to go and is stressed-out about her decision. While having a late-night snack of pasta, Agathe gets a mild scolding from Mona, who tells Agathe not to pass up this opportunity to go to this retreat.

“You’ve put your life on hold since the accident,” Mona tells Agathe. It’s later revealed that a great deal of Agathe’s insecurities and anxieties are from her grief over a car accident that killed their parents about seven years ago. Agatha’s father had a stroke while he was driving the car. Agathe and her mother were in the car, but only Agathe survived because Agathe was in the back seat.

Of course, Agathe decides to go to the retreat. Félix happily sends her off and gives her a romantic kiss before she leaves for the train station. Agathe surprises herself by immediately kissing him in the same way. She starts to wonder if maybe they maybe she could have a “friends with benefits” situation with Félix and if it could lead to true love.

When Agathe arrives in England, some of the romantic comedy clichés behind. She meets her driver—a serious-looking man about 10 years older than Agathe—named Oliver (played by Charlie Anson) and tells him that she gets panic attacks when she’s in cars, but she can handle getting in his car if that’s her only choice. And then, she vomits on Oliver’s shoes.

The car ride to the mansion is fraught with tension. Agathe is impressed when she finds out that Oliver is the son of the retreat’s founders—and he’s the great-great-great-great nephew of Jane Austen. But her admiration turns to dismay when Oliver says he’s not a fan of Jane Austen. Agathe defends Jane Austen by saying how pioneering Austen was for writing female characters as more realistically complex, in an era when most novels about women were written by men portraying women as either saintly or devilish.

Things go from bad to worse when the car breaks down on a deserted road and Oliver doesn’t know how to fix the car. Oliver tells Agathe that he’s only the driver for the retreat because his father lost his driver’s license. As Oliver tries to figure out how to fix the car, Agathe calls Mona on her cell phone and tells Mona in French that she’s stuck in a broken-down car with a rude and arrogant guy who hates Jane Austen. And faster than you can say “Mr. Darcy from ‘Pride and Prejudice’,” Oliver tells Agathe that he can speak and understand French because he had a five-year live-in relationship with a French woman.

During the course of the story, Oliver and Agathe open up to each ther about their lives. He was a literature professor whose French ex-girlfriend was a co-worker who broke his heart because she cheated on him with several people in their literature department. Oliver has been suspended from his professor job because he trashed the faculty break room in anger.

Oliver’s parents—Todd (played by Alan Fairbairn) and Beth (played by Liz Crowther)—are warm and welcoming to their guests. But it soon becomes apparent why Todd lost his driver’s license: He has early on-set dementia that seems to be getting worse. Agathe gets emotional about Todd because she tells him that he reminds her of her father.

Félix has made plans to visit Agathe at the retreat. Agathe and Oliver have a growing attraction to each other, but Agathe doubts she could have a future with Oliver because she has no intention of moving from France to England. Even with this “love triangle” storyline, you know where this story is going to go and which “suitor” is going to win Agathe’s heart.

Along the way, “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” has some slapstick comedy that is mildly amusing and a little corny. There are two separate scenes where Agathe encounters two llamas outdoors and gets spit in the face by one of the llamas.

On her first day at the mansion, Agathe settles into her room and gets ready to take a bath or shower. She walks fully naked into a room next door to her bedroom that she assumes is her bathroom. But surprise! The room is actually Oliver’s bedroom and he’s right there to see her walk in naked. An embarrassed Agathe screams and tells a smirking Oliver to keep that side of his door locked.

“Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” comes up very short in developing the other characters who are writers at the retreat: Olympia (played by Lola Peploe), Chéryl (played by Annabelle Lengronne) and Sybil (played by Rodrigue Pouvin) have very little revealed about them in the movie. It could be the way of the movie showing that introverted Agathe has a hard time making friends, but that’s not an excuse to prevent these supporting characters from having fully developed personalities.

Olympia is the only one of these three other writers whose personality stands out. She is bossy, pretentious and argumentative. During a group gathering, Olympia berates Agathe by saying that authors’ work must always have a political purpose. Agathe disagrees. Later, Olympia reveals her own persona heartbreak that is supposed to make Olympia more sympathetic.

The only thing that viewers find out about Chéryl is she likes to read people’s fortunes by using cards. As for Sybil, he’s barely in the movie and has a blank personality. (Documentary fans should look for a cameo from documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, who appears near the end of the movie as a poet giving a reading of his work.)

Even with the movie’s flaws, Rutherford gives Agathe a relatable humanity that makes this protagonist seem the most realistic character in the film, even if some of the situations around her are sometimes contrived. Agathe is mopey but also cautiously optimistic about finding a soul mate. She’s confident about what she’s most passionate but hesitant about how she goes after things that seem to come easier to other people.

Pauly and Anson do the best with what they’ve been given in the somewhat limited roles of Agathe’s potential love interests Félix and Oliver. “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” strives for romantic wish fulfillment but a lot of the story is about Agathe’s journey to self-confidence, regardless if she ends up with Félix, Oliver or neither. In that regard, “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” is a worthy but not spectacular tribute to the classic Austen heroine, who moves forward in life, even at the risk of painful and embarrassing experiences.

Sony Pictures Classics released “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” in select U.S. cinemas on May 23, 2025. The movie was released in France on January 22, 2025.

Review: ‘Eephus,’ starring Keith William Richards, Cliff Blake, Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee, Wayne Diamond, Joe Castiglione and the voice of Frederick Wiseman

March 18, 2025

by Carla Hay

“Eephus”

Directed by Carson Lund

Culture Representation: Taking place in 1994, in Douglas, Massachusetts, the comedy/drama film “Eephus” features a predominantly white group of people (with few African Americans, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Amateur baseball teams Adler’s Paint and the Riverdogs face off agant each other in their last game of the season and their last game in a field that will be demolished.

Culture Audience: “Eephus” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of baseball and movies about amateur athletes.

Patrick Garrigan, Chris Woodwin, Peter Minkarah, Stephen Radochia, Ari Brisbon, Ray Hryb and David Pridemore in “Eephus” (Photo courtesy of Music Box Films)

People interested in baseball will find a lot to like about “Eephus,” a leisurely comedy/drama about the last game that an amateur team plays in a soon-to-demolished baseball field. People who don’t like baseball might be bored by the movie’s insider talk. There’s a very specific audience that “Eephus” director Carson Lund wants to appeal to with this movie. “Eephus” is a love letter to that audience, told in a language of baseball that is best understood by people who already know the game and culture of baseball.

Writer/director Richard Linklater’s 1993 movie “Dazed and Confused” became a cult classic for teenage stoner comedies. “Eephus” (written by Lund, Michael Basta and Nate Fisher) might do the same for comedies about amateur baseball players. Both movies make viewers feel like they’re “hanging out” with several people in a clearly defined community, during a period of less than 24 hours. It’s not about having an action-filled plot but about having a storytelling vibe that shows a brief glimpse into the lives of ordinary people seeking social acceptance and pleasure in whatever makes them happy.

“Eephus” had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and made the rounds at other film festivals in 2024, including the New York Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival. The movie was inspired by Lund’s own passion for baseball and his upbringing in Nashua, New Hampshire, where he played baseball in his childhood. “Eephus” is Lund’s feature-film directorial debut.

“Eephus” takes place on a Sunday in October 1994, at Soldiers Field, in suburban Douglas, Massachusetts. The baseball field in the movie was inspired by North Common Baseball Field in Nashua, New Hampshire, but “Eephus” was filmed on location in Douglas. The movie’s title refers to the name of an unnatural curveball pitch that’s intended to confuse the batter because the eephus looks like it’s being pitched in slow motion.

The two teams shown in “Eephus” have been meeting to play games on Sundays at Soldiers Field for years. But the baseball game in this movie is the end of an era. “Eephus” begins with radio announcer Branch Moreland (voiced by Frederick Wiseman, in a cameo role) reporting the news about Soldiers Field being demolished in the near future, so that a new middle school can be built on the site. All of “Eephus” takes place on the field.

The movie begins sometime in the mid-afternoon for a game between Adler’s Paint (the home team whose team colors are red and white) and the Riverdogs (the away team whose team colors are blue and gray). Both teams have players ranging in ages from 30s to 60s. Franny (played by Cliff Blake), the diligent scorekeeper/umpire for the game, is inspired by the real Francis “Frannie” Whitford, a baseball enthusiast from Nashua, who died in 2023, at the age of 67. (“Eephus” has an “in memory of” caption to Whitford in the movie’s end credits.)

The game gets off to a bumpy start because the Riverdogs need nine players to qualify, but a ninth team member named Garrett Furnivall (played by Chris Goodwin) is running late and hasn’t shown up yet. Adler’s Point graciously allows the Riverdogs to participate in the game, on the condition that Garrett needs to be there by the second inning, or else the Riverdogs have to forfeit the game. Garrett (who’s the Riverdogs’ catcher) shows up just in time, so the game continues. But when Garrett goes up to bat, he’s immediately hit by the ball.

Although almost everyone on each team is shown talking, some members of the team have more memorable personalities and more screen time than others. The Adler’s Paint team and the Riverdogs team each has a hot-headed, stubborn player: short-haired and clean-shaven Bobby Crompton (played by Brendan Burt) pitches for Adler’s Paint; long-haired and bearded Rich Cole (played by Ray Hryb) plays left field for the Riverdogs. Graham Morris (played by Stephen Radochia) is Riverdogs’ mild-mannered third baseman, who becomes the target of Rich’s wrath during multiple parts of the game.

Preston Red (played by Jeff Saint-Dic) is the Adler’s Paint friendly third baseman/right fielder, who gets a home run during his first time at bat during the game. Adler’s Paint trivia-spouting pitcher Merritt Nettles (played by “Eephus” co-writer Fisher) is based on real-life Major League Baseball pitcher Zack Greinke. Adler’s Paint outfielder Chuck Poleen (played by Theodore Bouloukos) is the unofficial spokesperson for the team and is usually the peacemaker when conflicts happen between team members.

Other players include scruffy Riverdogs pitcher Troy Carnahan (played by David Pridemore); talkative Adler’s Paint catcher John Faiella (played by John R. Smith Jr.); comedic Adler’s Paint second baseman Tim Bassett (played by Ethan Ward); and jaded Adler’s Paint pitcher Ed Mortanian (played by Keith William Richards), who is usually benched and has to observe from the sidelines.

This game has very few spectators (less than 10) at any given moment. Most of the spectators are family members or significant others of some of the players. Riverdogs second baseman Bill Belinda (played by Russell G. Gannon) has his wife Linda Belinda (played by Timber Holmes) and their middle-school-aged daughter Julie (played by Annie Callan Tisdale) cheering him on at this game. Before the game begins, Julie sings an off-key version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” to the teams and the sparse crowd.

Two skateboarders named Reggie (played by Gregory Falatek) and Eddie (played by Luis Vicente) yell at the players to be an annoying distraction. One of the skateboarders yells, “How many touchdowns?” Rich becomes infuriated yells back at them to “fuck off.” Rich, who’s the type of person to hold petty grudges, later goes looking for these two troublemakers in the wooded area because he thinks they deserve to be punished for distracting the players during the game.

Also portraying spectators are former Boston Red Sox pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee (as a character named Lee Henderson) and former Boston Red Sox announcer Joe Castiglione, who has the role of Mr. Mallinari, the owner/operator of a Harry’s Pizza food truck that’s parked near the field. It’s the closest place to buy food during the game, so getting pizza to eat is mentioned several times during the movie. In real life, Lee was known for perfecting the eephus. The “Eephus” character of Lee Henderson is the field’s lawn mower, who suggests that the Riverdogs use the eephus strategy, and then he is unexpectedly pulled into the game for reasons that are shown in the movie.

“Eephus” has a lot of droll commentary for the movie’s comedy. When Bobby tries to steal second base and gets called out, Tim muses out loud: “Is there anything more beautiful than the sun setting on a fat man stealing second base?” A running joke in the movie is bitter Ed complaining to a spectator kid named Jack (played Jack DiFonso), who’s about 9 or 10 years old. When Ed asks Jack if he plays baseball, and Jack says yes, Ed tries to crush the kid’s dreams by giving him this one-word piece of advice: “Don’t.”

The game extends into the night because several extra innings end in a tie. Because the field has no lighting, the players improvise and come up with a way to have lighting on the field. A few of the players have to leave because the game runs so late, but the die-hards stay until the very end. “Eephus” shows how some of the players seem kind of glad that the game has gone on this long, like partygoers who don’t want a farewell party to end.

“Eephus” isn’t overly sentimental, but it does offer some emotionally poignant observations about aging athletes who love playing a sport and struggle with deciding when is the right time to retire from the sport. Because most of the cast members are not professional actors, “Eephus” has a naturalistic tone that might be too casual for some viewers, but the tone perfectly captures the patience required for this baseball game that goes on longer than expected. Simply put: “Eephus” is an admirable cinematic celebration of baseball players whose bodies are no longer in the peak of their youth, but their love of the sport never gets old.

Music Box Films released “Eephus” in select U.S cinemas on March 7, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on April 15, 2025. “Eephus” will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on June 24, 2025.

Review: ‘A Couple’ (2022), starring Nathalie Boutefeu

October 2, 2022

by Carla Hay

Nathalie Boutefeu in “A Couple” (Photo courtesy of Zipporah Films)

“A Couple” (2022)

Directed by Frederick Wiseman

French with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place sometime between 1910 and 1919, on Belle-Île, off the coast of Brittany, France, the dramatic film “A Couple” has only one person in the movie’s cast, in a portrayal of Russian writer Sophia Tolstaya, widow of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.

Culture Clash: In the movie, Tolstaya reads out loud portions of letters and diary entries that she and Tolstoy wrote that detail their volatile and depressing marriage.

Culture Audience: “A Couple” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Frederick Wiseman and Tolstoy, as well people who are interested in the private life of a famous writer, but everyone else might be very bored by this movie.

“A Couple” is really about one-half of a couple. It’s a series of monologues where Nathalie Boutefeu portrays widow Sophia Tolstaya griping about how her marriage to Leo Tolstoy was unhappy. Boutefeu’s compelling performance saves this very repetitive film. Even though this writer couple was Russian, “A Couple” is a French-language film, probably because Boutefeu is French. The movie was also filmed on Belle-Île, off the coast of Brittany, France.

“A Couple” director Frederick Wiseman is mostly known for making documentary films, so “A Couple” is a departure for him, because it is a narrative feature, based on the personal writings of Tolstaya and Tolstoy. (Nominated several times for Nobel prizes, Tolstoy is best-known for his novels “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina.”) Wiseman and Boutefeu co-wrote the adapted screenplay of “A Couple.” The movie had its world premiere at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival in Italy and its North American premiere at the 2022 New York Film Festival in New York City.

Boutefeu (in the role of Sophia) is the only person who appears on screen for the entire movie. She gives monologues where she reads letters and diary entries written by Tolstaya and Tolstoy that detail the couple’s troubled marriage. (For the purposes of this review, the movie character is referred to as Sophia, while the real-life Tolstaya is referred to as Tolstaya.) Tolstaya’s writings are read more in the movie than Tolstoy’s writings.

What emerges is a portrait of a cold and domineering husband who frequently cheated on his wife and inflicted various forms of emotional abuse on her. He mistreated her and acted like he wasn’t in love with her, but he also didn’t want her to leave him. In other words, “A Couple” isn’t a feel-good movie.

What the movie doesn’t give is any background information on the two people in this miserable marriage. In real life, Countess Sophia Behrs married Leo Tolstoy in 1852, when she was 18, and he was 34. They were married for 48 years, until his death in 1910, at the age of 82. Tolstaya died in 1919, at the age of 75. The couple had 13 children together, but Tolstoy fathered at least one other child through his chronic extramarital infidelity, according to this movie.

“A Couple” begins and ends with the widowed Sophia in a dimly lit room holding the letters that she will end up reading out loud during the course of this 64-minute movie. The rest of the film takes place entirely outdoors with lovely scenic views of the terrain where the monologues were filmed in grassy areas and on rocks near a beach. There are also some close-ups of some of the small outdoor insects (such as butterflies) that live in the grassy areas.

In these monologues, Sophia talks about her husband’s cruelty and how he often seemed like he regretted marrying her. “It took me years to understand your moods, your demons,” she says. She also seems to struggle with her love/hate feelings about her husband.

“I am still in love,” she says. “You illuminate my life.” But she also says, “For you, I am nothing but a mangy dog.” She continues, “I feel abandoned. I don’t have a husband/friend.” She later says, “I envy the couples who enjoy a spiritual bond with a physical relationship.”

Sophia details this loneliness in the marriage when she talks about how her husband preferred to spend time playing piano for four to six hours a day, or taking long walks by himself, instead of spending that time with her and their children. He was also disinterested in putting up a happy front to people about this marriage. “Remember the modest party for our 10th anniversary?” she asks aloud in a superficial manner, as if the size of an anniversary party is supposed to reflect how much spouses love each other.

To add insult to injury, her husband’s mistress lived nearby with the son allegedly born from this extramarital affair. And so, Sophia has to endure the humiliation and having this reminder of his infidelity near her and the children. “Disenchantment has invaded our life,” she says mournfully. If the marriage had any happiness, it’s not depicted in this movie.

Sophia also expresses bitterness about how in 30 years of marriage, her husband never spent time showing concern when any of their children got sick. She talks about feeling like the only one in the marriage who took on the responsibility of being a nurturing parent to their children. And it goes without saying that Sophia’s writing career wasn’t allowed to flourish in the way that her husband’s writing career thrived.

The movie’s scenes also include descriptions of the husband’s vicious temper. According to the movie, he would throw breakable things when he got angry. And when Sophia tried to leave him, he dragged her while she was “half-naked” back their house. The abuse in the marriage got so bad for her, Sophia exclaims in a diary entry: “Take me to the police or to the madhouse!”

Boutefeu infuses these monologues with all the visceral emotions of a spouse desperately trapped in a bad marriage but conflicted enough that she holds out hope that things might improve and her husband will show that he might still love her. Sophia mentions that their children are her main sources of joy and the biggest reason why she’s staying in the marriage. It’s a story that unfortunately is not unique to any particular time period or culture, because these toxic relationships can happen to anyone at any time.

Boutefeu’s acting is the main thing that “A Couple” has to offer that gives some emotional context to the words that are being recited on the screen, because there’s nothing particularly special about the movie’s cinematography or editing. After a while, it gets redundant to hear the same marital complaints being said out loud. Don’t expect “A Couple” to give any major insight into how these literary couple worked on any of their writings that weren’t these diary entries or personal letters.

If the total running time of “A Couple” had stretched to 90 minutes or more, the movie definitely would have overstayed its welcome. Clocking at a little over one hour is just about the length time before “A Couple” would start to slide into irredeemable monotony. This movie would have been even better if it had been a short film. As it stands, “A Couple” can be recommended only for those curious to take an uncomfortable peek inside the grim marriage of Tolstoy and Tolstaya, giving some insight into why their writing was about so much angst, suffering and betrayal.

Zipporah Films will release “A Couple” in select U.S. cinemas on November 11, 2022.