The titular character's place in the scheme of things is an interesting one: a lead character doomed to live in the shadow of a supporting character; more exactly, an impoverished young pianist selected as accompanist, and "maybe also artistic advisor," to an illustrious Russian diva in Nazi-occupied France. Besides accompanist, she becomes also an accomplice in the diva's extramarital affair with a dashing, haunted-looking, lightly bearded Resistance leader. (The cuckolded husband is a collaborationist and a war profiteer.) The unspooling drama of art and politics, of commitment and detachment, is highly civilized and literate and well-crafted and, for all that, slow and remote and uninvolving. Or, to borrow a few words from the mouth of the diva: "Good. Very sensitive. Too sensitive?" The lip-synching of the musical numbers (Berlioz, Mozart, Schubert, et al.) is, as lip-synching goes, very good indeed, particularly in light of the closeness of the camera. Tenacious scrutiny of faces would seem to be the dominating, even overbearing, stylistic device of the movie. And Elena Safonova's slight elevation of eyebrow, her luminosity of complexion, her queenly patronization of all those around her, more than fill the bill of the stereotypical prima donna. On the other hand, the face of Romane Bohringer in the role of the pianist -- the bump in the bridge of her nose, the chink in her chin, the sprinkling of moles of various sizes -- is the kind that you would never get to see in the lead role of a Hollywood production, and the kind that makes it easy to overrate her acting. The hard truth of it is that the number of her closeups far outstrips her range of expressions: the super-demure, the hyper-expectant, the ultra-this, the extra-that. Directed by Claude Miller. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd