''Two Women'' (, ''Dve zhenshchiny'') is a 2014 Russian drama film directed by

Vera Glagoleva Vera Vitalievna Glagoleva (russian: Вера Витальевна Глаголева; 31 January 1956 – 16 August 2017) was a Soviet and Russian actress and film director. Glagoleva was born in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union in 1956. ...

, starring

Ralph Fiennes Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes ( ; born 22 December 1962) is an English actor, film producer, and director. A Shakespeare interpreter, he excelled onstage at the Royal National Theatre before having further success at the Royal Shak ...

and

Sylvie Testud Sylvie Testud (born 17 January 1971) is a French actress hose film career est Actress for '' Fear and Trembling'' (2003), and the European Film Award for Best Actress for '' Lourdes'' (2009). Her other film roles include '' Beyond Silence'' ( ...

. It is based on

Ivan Turgenev Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (; rus, links=no, Ива́н Серге́евич Турге́невIn Turgenev's day, his name was written ., p=ɪˈvan sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ tʊrˈɡʲenʲɪf; 9 November 1818 – 3 September 1883 (Old Style dat ...

's 1872 play '' A Month in the Country'' (originally written as ''Two Women'' in 1855). The film received mixed reviews from critics.

Plot

At the heart of the play lies the love quadrangle. Natalya Petrovna, the wife of the rich landowner Arkady Sergeich Islaev, falls in love with Alexey Nikolayevich Belyaev - a student, teacher Kolya Islaeva. Mikhail Aleksandrovich Rakitin - a friend of the family, has long loved Natalya Petrovna. Verochka - a pupil of Natalya Petrovna also falls in love with Kolya's teacher. Belyaev and Rakitin eventually leave the estate ...

Cast

* Anna Vartanyan-Astrakhantseva ( ru) as Natalya Petrovna Islaeva *

as Mikhail Aleksandrovich Rakitin * Aleksandr Baluev as Arkady Sergeich Islaev *

as Elisavetta Bogdanovna *

Anna Levanova Anna Nikolayevna Levanova (russian: Анна Николаевна Леванова; born 19 December 1988) is a Russian television and film actress, known for ''McMafia'' and ''Two Women''. In 2014, she won the Yul Brynner Award of the Pacific ...

as Verochka * Nikita Volkov as Alexey Nikolayevich Belyaev *

Larisa Malevannaya Larisa Ivanovna Malevannaya (russian: Лари́са Ива́новна Малева́нная) is a Russian film and theater actress, theater director, and writer. Biography and career Malevannaya was born on January 22, 1939, in the village of ...

as Anna Semenovna Islaeva * Bernd Moss as Schaaf * Sergey Yushkevich as Ignaty Shpigelsky * Vasiliy Mishchenko as Bolshentsov * Anna Nahapetova as Katya

Reception

''Two Women'' has an approval rating of 89% on

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, based on 9 reviews, and an average rating of 6.00/10. It also has a score of 54 out of 100 on

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, based on 4 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Clarence Tsui of ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...

'' wrote:

Fiennes' superficial turn (in more ways than one, as his lines ended up overdubbed by a Russian voice actor) is hampered more by circumstances than ability: rather than playing on the multiple possibilities underlining Turgenev's once-transgressive comedy of manners, actress-turned-filmmaker Vera Glagoleva's 21st century take is a po-faced, straitjacketed affair, as she (and her screenwriters Svetlana Grudovich and Olga Pogodina-Kuzima) play out the entangled relationships as excessively affected period drama. While certainly lushly mounted, ''Two Women'' is at best a piece of dated heritage cinema, and at worst cliche-ridden pomp.

Awards and nominations

The film won the Best Feature Film award at the 3rd Hanoi International Film Festival.

References

External links

Official website
* * * 2014 drama films 2014 films Russian films based on plays Films based on works by Ivan Turgenev Films set in the 19th century Russian drama films 2010s Russian-language films Films based on Russian novels {{Russia-film-stub