Talk about women talking. After making fly-on-the-wall documentaries for 60 years, Boston-born filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, 92, has made a second narrative film. The first was the 2002 effort “La derniere lettre.” Like its predecessor, “A Couple” is a one-woman show, in this case featuring French actor Nathalie Boutefeu, who co-wrote the film’s script with Wiseman, based on the letters and diaries of Sophia Tolstoy.
“A Couple” is a series of monologues intercut with beautiful nature shots, mostly waves crashing upon rocks and flowers in bloom. The nature shots are like a ticking clock, counting away the decades of Russian summers that Sophia and Leo and their children shared together. In addition to the words spoken in French by Boutefeu’s Sophia, we hear insects and animals. The film was shot on Belle Isle, off the coast of Brittany. With occasional references to periods of happiness, we hear the lament of a woman married to a man who was unfaithful and unreasonable to her during their decades together.
Sometimes addressing the camera and sometimes not, sometimes clasping her floral shawl and sometimes not, Sophia addresses her husband Leo, who is not present. She was 18 years old when they married. He was 34. In addition to bearing 13 children, she copied and recopied his manuscripts, including the monumental 1869 novel “War and Peace.” He was jealous and cruel, criticizing her in front of others. He was the giant. She lived in his shadow, although she was also an author. He was beset by demons and despair and flagrantly unfaithful. “You left us,” she says, referring to her and their many children. She accuses him of violence, even when she was pregnant.
Like “La derniere lettre” with the great Comedie-Francaise actor Catherine Samie, “A Couple” benefits tremendously from the performance its lead and sole character. Boutefeu gives Sophia a face, a voice and an urgent need to tell her story. For all the laments, complaints and accusations, it is clear that Sophia was devoted to her husband and a partner in his career. One must imagine “A Couple” to be also a tribute — of sorts — to Wiseman’s own marriage and wife of 65 years Zipporah, who died in 2021. What little music there is in the film is by Felix Mendelssohn.
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'A COUPLE'
(In French with English subtitles)
No rating (contains scenes of emotional distress and anguish)
Grade: A-
Running time: 1:03
How to watch: Now in theaters
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