The Kreutzer Sonata bares all - Film - Arts - Evening Standard
       

The Kreutzer Sonata bares all

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Based on a formerly banned story by Tolstoy and embellished by Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata for violin and piano, Bernard Rose’s study of sexual obsession doesn’t spare the humping scenes. A rich philanthropist (Danny Huston) and a classical pianist (Elizabeth Rohm) go at it hammer and tongs before he gets hooked on the idea that she is having an affair with a violinist (Matthew Yang King) and goes half mad with jealousy. 

The tale has the same watchability and intense atmosphere of Ivans XTC, another of Rose’s Tolstoy adaptations — even if its conclusion pitches it into near melodrama. Huston’s sweatily doubting performance is remarkable and the way Rohm suggests, after marriage and two children, that life has become deadly without her music is particularly effective. It may ultimately lack subtlety, but it peers into the hearts and minds of its two weird protagonists with some skill. And in doing so provides a provocative portrait of love off the bed and on the rocks.

The Kreutzer Sonata
Cert: 18

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