The film, directed by debutant Glenio Bonder, who previously directed advertising, is based on Albert Cohen's tetralogy "The Loves of a Master" (Belle du Seigneur, 1968). It is customary to say about such plots that “this is a story of all-consuming love against the backdrop of historical upheavals,” and the writer Begbeder, who ranked the novel among the best books of the twentieth century, retold it as follows: “The thirties. Solal, a handsome Jew originally from Cephalonia, a high-ranking official in League of Nations, falls in love with a married woman, Ariana, and flirts with her for 350 pages until she leaves her pathetic husband." In the film, the handsome Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Solal, with his signature facial expression - jaded and at the same time voluptuous - picks up the beautiful Natalia Vodianova (Ariana) during one scene with the rather cheap techniques of a written Don Juan. Solal is generally prone to theatricality and behaves in approximately the same manner at meetings of the League of Nations - a puppet organization that has no political weight and is unable to resist the fascist infection that is rapidly spreading in Europe. As a sign of his contempt for the practices of idle talk that have developed there, Solal, with a sweeping gesture, throws his French passport into the trash bin and becomes a stateless outcast. He takes Ariana to a villa in Italy to live locked up with her and torment her with scenes of jealousy. His nature is too subtle and sublime, and he just can’t do anything good - that’s why he resorts to heartbreaking sadomasochistic practices. Solal asks Ariana whether she would love him as an unsightly old man in slippers? What if, instead of a handsome man, he turned into a wrinkled stump? The situation heats up to the limit when Ariana inadvertently admits to a rabid jealous man that before meeting him, she cheated on her husband with an opera conductor.

Looking at Vodianova in her first leading role, you understand why the careers of some silent film divas ended with the advent of sound: as befits a supermodel, she looks great, but cannot work with a voice that sounds like baby talk and is absolutely devoid of dramatic modulations. Rhys Meyers, as usual, is irresistible, and he even manages not to look funny in this cheesy role, but the whole material ends up looking rather ridiculous: the director, apparently, tried on Twilight of the Gods, and what came out was something like the teen Twilight franchise ".

In theaters from November 29

Tatyana Aleshicheva

“Lovers” – Weekend – Kommersant