Women on the Verge

In a game of chess, the queen, capable of moving multiple spaces in any direction, is the most agile and powerful piece on the board. It is perhaps because the game lends itself to such a strong female protagonist that a movie about chess, The Luzhin Defense, was chosen to kick off this year’s Ninth Annual Boston International Festival of Women’s Cinema, which began yesterday.

The award-winning festival, held every year at Harvard Square’s very own Brattle Theatre to showcase the works of prominent and emerging female filmmakers, will be held from Thursday, April 19 through Sunday, April 22. This year, in addition to The Luzhin Defense, Christine Lahti’s My First Mister (starring Albert Brooks, Leelee Sobieski, John Goodman, and Carol Kane) will be highlighted, as well as films by renowned directors Sally Potter, Lynne Sopkewich and Samantha Lang. Screenings will be held all weekend long at the Brattle as well as the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline.

The Luzhin Defence is adapted from the book of the same name by the brilliant Vladimir Nabokov. A much earlier novel than more well-known works like Lolita and Pale Fire, Nabokov nonetheless provides the grounds for intriguing themes weaved within an intricate plot. Director Marleen Gorris has improved upon the original by tightening the plot and adding a complex and unpredictable ending that highlights the strength of her female protagonist and leaves the viewer puzzled over how to respond.

Gorris’s adaptation stars John Turturro as Alexander Ivanovich Luzhin, an ingenious but eccentric chess master who is at once addicted and allergic to the game he has mastered. Though his characters is so out of touch with the reality outside of the chessboard that he cannot even hold up a casual conversation, he nonetheless portrays a charming helplessness that neither the audience nor the film’s female protagonist can help responding to.

Luzhin is participating in an important chess tournament against Turati (Fabio Sartor), the world’s top chess master, when he stumbles upon Natalia (Emily Watson). Before he has even asked for her name or managed to engage her in a conversation of more than a few words, Luzhin asks for her hand in marriage. This provides the starting point for the strange yet endearing relationship between the two.

Though it is Luzhin whose name appears in the title, Gorris has transformed and developed the character of Natalia from Nabokov’s book in which she is nameless. In the film, Watson arguably plays the starring role, and is certainly no less outstanding than Turturro. The story is introduced, and much of it told, through Natalia’s perspective, and it seems that she is much wiser to the complexities of the real world than her counterpart, who is lost in the complexities of the world of chess.

Natalia’s strength is put to use in defending her mate from a variety of onslaughts. When Luzhin’s former coach, Valentinov (Stuart Wilson II), arrives with a malevolent desire to see his pupil defeated, he warns Turati that Luzhin plays poorly under pressure. Therefore the two conspire—Turati will play an aggressive game in order to create pressure on the board; Valentinov will disrupt Luzhin’s affair with Natalia in order to create pressure off the board.

Even before Valentinov’s arrival, Luzhin’s love is already threatened by Natalia’s parents, people of society who are hesitant to allow their daughter to marry such an eccentric. Yet Natalia nimbly maneuvers her way between each of these parties. Her success or failure (and Luzhin’s) is a curious question that the ending engages yet leaves unanswered.

The strengths of The Luzhin Defense are its enigmatic plots and themes. The film maintains the same suspense of the high stakes games of chess and fills the screen with complex interrelationships between characters. All of its thematic gestures seem to feed off of each other, each adding another layer of depth. The film, for example, raises a subtle contrast between Luzhin’s brilliant capacity for strategy and his crippling psychological illnesses. This contrast plays out along the constant parallel between Luzhin’s life and chess games and richens the film’s ending.

The parallels between Luzhin’s life and his talent are physicalized in stunning landscapes that give the film’s Russian, Italian and American settings the feel of ornate life-size chessboards. There is, in fact, literally an ornate life-size chessboard right in front of the site of the chess tournament. Most of these landscapes, however, are much subtler—black and white tiled floors across which men and women walk deliberate patterns, rows of pillars arranged like pawns and carefully arrayed statues of kings, queens and their retinues of minions.

The only flaw in an otherwise fabulous film is the character of Luzhin. Though very endearing, he seems to be more or less the run-of-the-mill eccentric. Turturro plays the role powerfully and convincingly, but the character is nonetheless a little flat. Instead, it is Watson’s performance that steals the show with an original combination of grace, tenderness and intelligence. The Luzhin Defense is slated for release in theaters April 27.

The Luzhin Defence

directed by Marleen Gorris

starring John Turturro, Emily Watson

Clear Blue Sky Productions