The film opened December 31, 1999 in the US, wider on later dates. As Evgeny Onegin, a jaded bachelor who learns how to love too late; the film is based on. December 22, 1999. `Onegin': A Cold Comeuppance in St. Related Articles; The New York Times on the Web: Current Film. Ralph Fiennes portrays Evgeny Onegin, a dashing aristocrat who causes women to melt.

Onegin is a man bemused by his own worthlessness. He has been carefully prepared by his aristocratic 19th century upbringing to be unnecessary--an outside man, hanging on, looking into the lives of others. Even when he's given the opportunity to play a role after he inherits his uncle's estate, his response is to rent the land to his serfs.

In another man, this would be seen as liberalism. Blackberry 9900 sale. In Evgeny Onegin, it is more like indifference. 'Onegin' is a leisurely, elegant, detached retelling of Alexander Pushkin's epic verse novel, with as the hero. It is the kind of role once automatically assigned to.

Both men look as if they have stayed up too late and not eaten their greens, but Irons in the grip of passion is able to seem lost and heedless, while Fiennes suggests it is heavy lifting, with few rewards. 'I am not one who is made for love and marriage,' his Onegin says soulfully. As the film opens, Onegin is returning to inherit his uncle's estate outside St. Petersburg after having lost his own fortune at the gambling tables. He is welcomed by receptions, teas and balls, and embraced by his neighbor Lensky (). Lensky has a young bride named Olga (), and she has an older sister named Tatyana (), who is a lone spirit and visits Onegin's estate to borrow books from his library. Tyler has the assignment of suggesting passionate depths beneath a cool exterior and succeeds: She is grave and silent, with an ethereal quality that is belied by her bold use of eye contact.

Onegin probably falls in love with her the first time he sees her, but is not, of course, made for love and shrugs off his real feelings in order to enter into a flirtation with Olga, who is safely married. Tatyana's waters run deep. She declares herself in a passionate love letter to Onegin (the moment she saw his face, she knew her heart was his, etc.), but such passion only alarms him. 'Any stranger might have stumbled into your life and aroused your romantic imagination,' he tells her tactlessly. 'I have no secret longing to be saved from myself.'

'You curse yourself!' She cries, rejected. The heartless Onegin continues his dalliance with Olga. This leads to a duel with Lensky.

His heart is broken when he kills his friend; that will teach him to call a 19th century Russian nobleman's wife 'easy.' Onegin flees to exile (or Paris, which are synonymous).

Six years pass. He returns to St. Petersburg and sees Tatyana again, at a ball. But now the tables are turned, in ironic revelations and belated discoveries, and Onegin pays the price for his heartlessness. There is a cool, mannered elegance to the picture that I like, but it's dead at its center. There is no feeling that real feelings are at risk here.

Tyler seems sincere enough, but Fiennes withholds too well. And the direction, by his sister, is deliberate and detached when it should perhaps plunge into the story. The visuals are wonderful, but the drama is muted.