The Luzhin Defence

I can't think of another movie that more fluently communicates the special agony and ecstasy of the game of chess.

A smart, romantic, heartbreaking pleasure.

Watson's character grows in importance until she eclipses the recessive Luzhin.

Turturro's Luzhin is a cinematic soulmate of Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man and Geoffrey Rush's David Helfgott.

In the end, it demonstrates all over again the virtual impossibility of doing Nabokov justice on film, because his work is so resolutely and brilliantly made of words.

When the film sticks with the eccentric comedy of a highborn woman attracted to a preoccupied genius, it works splendidly. When it strays into melodrama, it is as ill-equipped as Luzhin.

It's one of those period dramas about upper-crust Europeans in vacation resorts, which at first we think we've seen a million times before.