The Luzhin Defence

Emily Watson adds to her list of difficult men in Marleen Gorris's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's 1930 novel The Defence. As Natalia, the scion of a wealthy White Russian family in exile, she has determined to marry eccentric chess grandmaster Alexander Luzhin (John Turturro) despite her mother's objections and her beloved's mental instability. Luzhin has fallen for her, as well, but he's in the midst of a world championship match that brings up memories of a Nabokovian past of obsession, exploitation, and frustrated desire. This Gorris relates in inky flashbacks that are as umbrous and ominous as the shots of the Fascist-era Italian lake district where the tournament takes place are sunny and picturesque.

Watson is superb as the plucky nurturer, but Turturro's Luzhin is an embarrassment with his whining in a bad accent and his confusion of stricken genius with annoying idiocy; he was better suited to bowling of the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski. As with her adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Gorris brings more admiration than insight to great literature. Devoid of the original's madness or metaphors, The Luzhin Defence is Rain Man with a tedious endgame. At the Avon.
-- Peter Keough