SYNOPSIS
Frederick Wiseman returns to narrative filmmaking for the first time in 20 years since The Last Letter (2002), presenting a monologue drama adapted with actor Nathalie Boutefeu. Based on diaries and letters of Sophia, Tolstoy's wife, the film follows her confessions amid the natural landscapes of Belle-Île-en-Mer island off the Brittany coast. Sophia recalls married life entangled with love, betrayal, and disillusionment, delicately revealing conflicts between devotion and selfhood. Wiseman's restrained direction expands this confession into deep reflection on marriage, identity, and power relations.
REVIEW
Frederick Wiseman's A Couple distills the long and turbulent marriage of Leo Tolstoy and his wife, Sophia, into a single voice. Married for thirty-six years with thirteen children—nine of whom survived—the Tolstoys shared a life of intense creative and emotional friction. They kept diaries and lived under the same roof, yet often communicated by letter despite their deep discord. The film draws entirely from Sophia's own words—excerpts from her correspondence and journals to Leo—to form a monologue on the joys and sorrows of their shared life. Shot in the beautiful gardens of Belle-Île off the coast of Brittany, A Couple pairs these reflections with images of pond reeds, waves washing over rocks, ants climbing trees, and birds among flowers. Actress Nathalie Boutefeu embodies Sophia, her delivery carrying the weight of time and the subtle turns of feeling embedded in the text.
In adapting these words to the screen, Wiseman continues a method he explored in The Last Letter (2002), where he dramatized a woman's letter to her son. Here again, he employs actors and reenactment to translate richly nuanced source material into cinema. A Couple functions as a document made from textual material—an exploration of whether tone, emotion, and nuance can be fully preserved when written text becomes moving image.
The juxtaposition of Sophia's letters with natural elements creates both a completely new fictional film and, in another sense, a documentary. Fidelity in this adaptation isn't about literal imitation, but about the creation of something entirely new while honoring the original's emotional truth.
