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The film has status as yesterday's official closing night gala of the Toronto film festival. It has already opened successfully in Mother Russia, in a dubbed version.
But Onegin doesn't have a distributor in either the United States or Canada, nor in countries such as France. And it may never have one, Fiennes said in a Sun interview.
"It's worrying the shit out of me," Fiennes said bluntly. "I'm sorry, but you've caught me at a vulnerable time right now."
Fiennes is happy that the Canadian-based CanWest Global Communications has invested $10 million (U.S.) in the world-wide distribution rights. CanWest, however, does not distribute films. It will have to re-sell Onegin to U.S. and Canadian distributors before it is seen in theatres here.
Inspired by reading Alexsandr Pushkin's epic poem Evgeni Onegin when he was still a drama student, Fiennes personally developed the film project over the past seven years, working with his young sister Martha Fiennes. She makes her directorial debut on it. Ralph Fiennes is the executive producer.
"We are going to get it released in the rest of the world, at least in key European countries, although France is not certain," Fiennes said. "I get the feeling that people are not confident. They can see that it has its merits but we don't yet have the kind of distribution muscle we need behind it."
Onegin has a dark, moody tone and a tragic romantic theme. The film captures the spirit of the cynical, troubled man, a lost soul who cannot engage in his emotions until it is too late, a metaphor for life in Russia. It is art but is it commerce?
There is also no guarantee that the Ralph Fiennes name can carry a film to box-office success, despite the surprise commercial as well as artistic success of The English Patient.
"Since then," Fiennes conceded, "I haven't had a strong commercial success. Not Oscar & Lucinda. Certainly not The Avengers. I think that the film doesn't look like another English Patient to people."
For Martha Fiennes, who calls Onegin "a labour of love," the film's fate is frustrating. But it is not not life shattering.
"I personally don't lose sleep over it because I've done the work with all the integrity I could. It was a difficult thing to make. I certainly hope this works out. It could be a slow burn kind of thing. But I don't hold on to it in a sort of desperate way. I still sleep well at night."
What does bug her is the grasp the marketing arm of filmmaking has on the industry. "The word 'commercial' is uttered every other f...ing word," she groused in her interview. "And that is a disappointment."
She cites the example of Sunshine, another filmfest gala which co-stars Ralph. It is also looking for a U.S. distributor (Sunshine already has Alliance Atlantis behind it in Canada).
"At the very least it's an extraordinary document of a time in history. If this document is not accessible to people then I am very sorry and I pray to God it will be.
"I think things are desperately dumbed down. Don't get me wrong, I love to
have a good laugh and I'm very happy to put on my '10-year-old hat' and go
and be entertained. But sometimes I'm not the least bit entertained. I'm
confused and I'm rather bored. There has to be room for a wider range of
films."
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© EL STEPHO
Added to the RF Reading Room on September 27, 1999
EL STEPHO