Premiere Mag Onegin blurb

February 1999

Huddled on a London jetty with her wind- and rain-swept camera crew, first- time director Martha Fiennes is attempting to film a picnic scene for her romantic tragedy Onegin. The sense of doom is reflected in today's skies, which have just begun to dump hail onto the production -- an unwelcome development despite the fact that England is doubling for Russia. The director's brother Ralph -- the film's star and executive producer -- stoically endures the ice pelting and continues the scene in which his character, Eugene Onegin, alienates his best friend, Vladimir Lensky (played by Toby Stephens, a last minute replacement for Jude Law). When lunch is mercifully called, Stephens mutters "That was painful." Fiennes says nothing.

Apart from occasionally capricious weather, the experience of bringing Onegin to the screen has been anything but painful for the siblings Fiennes. It's been a seven-year familial collaboration that began when Ralph first discovered Aleksandr Pushkin's poetic novel Eugene Onegin, about a dashing but cynical man in 1820's Russia whose unremitting cruelty leaves a trail of heartbreak and betrayal in its wake. (Liv Tyler plays his long suffering paramour.) The Fienneses began developing the project before Ralph achieved instant fame and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his portrayal of another conscience-impaired character, Amon Goeth, in Schindler's List. All the while, Martha has been helping to refine the Onegin script while pursuing a career as a director of commercials.

This has been such a big part of our lives, says Martha of her feature debut. She is also keenly aware of the assumption that she was given the opportunity because of her famous big brother. "When people heard she was directing, there was a lot of [sneering tone], 'Oh, she's Ralph's younger sister'," says producer Ileen Maisel, who first worked with Ralph on 1992's 'Wuthering Heights.' "But I never wavered."

Ralph insists his sister has done it for herself. "Martha's got a very strong eye," he says. "If youre going to adapt something that is so visually strong, you need someone with a brave approach, someone who wouldn't settle into doing an anthropological study of manners."

Today, the interaction between Ralph and Martha plays like a study in sibling shorthand. As Ralph unzips his trousers to fiddle with a microphone wire running up his leg, they map out the rest of the scene with an exchange of glances and a few mumbled phrases that could be mistaken for brewing tension between an established star and a rookie director. But formalities and small talk are not part of this family dynamic. "Ralph is so focused that he doesn't have a laugh in between takes," Martha says. "But that's Ralph -- he's always been that kind of person."