The Lovers and the Despot

Cannan and Adam approach the outlandish crime as a puzzlement, all but wondering aloud how two celebrities could be stolen from public life and turned into a dictator’s puppets.

It’s a fantastically bonkers story told excitedly in The Lovers and the Despot, a stranger-than-fiction yarn that would make a hell of an opera.

As both an utterly mad true story and as a document of the boundless reach of the cinema across borders and cultures and even ideologies, The Lovers and the Despot is wild, valuable viewing for all.

The film is brisk and fascinating, ultimately moving, but also less rich than it might have been.

It’s told in a woefully pedestrian way, with talking-head footage forming the bulk of this slow-to-develop film. Still, it’s a creepily fascinating tale.

A frustrating missed opportunity, The Lovers and the Despot takes a fascinating story about filmmaking, politics, kidnapping and propaganda and gives us almost no insight into the work of its two main characters, a director and his actress wife.

It’s one hell of a yarn, which makes The Lovers and the Despot’s strangely soporific style something of a disappointment.