A Couple

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Leo Tolstoy’s famed opening to Anna Karenina easily applies to the early years of his deliriously passionate marriage to a woman 16 years his junior, as well as to their final years, marked by violent arguments, guilt, and recriminations. Prolific documentary maestro Frederick Wiseman (46 feature-length films since 1967) has fashioned a moving, empathetic monologue based on the diaries of Sophia Tolstoy, with whom the great writer had 13 children and who, as his amanuensis, copied his masterpiece, War and Peace, seven times. Filmed amid gorgeous, idyllic settings befitting a Russian countess, French actress Nathalie Boutefeu portrays Sophia as a determined, loving, angry woman who recognizes the limitations of long-term marriage to a man of world-renown. In the words of Olivia Harrison (wife of George Harrison): “The secret to long-term marriage? You don’t get divorced.” – Karen Cooper, Director, Film Forum