Onegin

A more prudent director than Martha Fiennes (sister of Ralph) might have given serious thought to the fact that no-one has ever filmed Alexander Pushkin's 1833 verse novel (with the exception of a film of Tschaikovsky's opera), even though it's a milestone in the Russian literary canon. Its prickly hero is Evgeny Onegin (Ralph Fiennes, ill-served by a singularly unflattering, though no doubt historically accurate, hairdo), a dilettante who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing before Oscar Wilde ever defined "cynic." Called to the sickbed of a wealthy uncle, whose vast country estate lies far from the glittering lights of St. Petersberg and therefore...