Gorris was also very pleased with the casting in all of the supporting roles. “All the cast worked well together. Their intensive collaboration and superb acting skills combined with fantastic senses of humour, made working with them an unalloyed pleasure."

Geraldine James plays Vera, Natalia’s mother and was pleased to take on such an interesting role. “I think one of the strengths of the script is that all the people around the main characters are human beings and it’s very important that they are. I’m not just the awful mother-in-law, I have a human side which is revealed, a certain vulnerability which takes the character away from stereotype.” Adds Christopher Thompson who plays Jean de Stassard: “I think my character represents an option for Natalia. We’re part of the same world and would be a good match. I think it’s important that Stassard is not only the most obvious choice for her but also an interesting one. Her ultimate commitment to Luzhin is all the more significant because Stassard is not a fool."

The Book
Vladimir Nabokov was born in St Petersburg in 1899, the elder son of an aristocratic, cultured, politically liberal family. When the Bolsheviks seized power the family left Russia and moved first to London, then to Berlin, where Nabokov rejoined them in 1922, after having completed his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge. Between 1923 and 1940 he published novels, short stories, plays, poems and translations in the Russian language and was recognised as one of the outstanding writers of the emigration. In 1940 he and his wife and son moved to America, where he was a lecturer at Wellesley College from 1941 to 1948. He was then Professor of Russian Literature at Cornell University until he retired from teaching in 1959. His first novel written in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, was published in 1941 and his best-known novel Lolita brought him world-wide fame. In 1973 he was awarded the American National Medal for Literature. He died in 1977 in Montreux, Switzerland.

His works include, from the Russian novels, The Luzhin Defence and The Gift; from the English novels, Lolita, Pnin, Pale Fire and Ada; the autobiographical Speak, Memory; translations of Alice in Wonderland into Russian and Eugene Onegin into English; and lectures on literature.

Nabokov is one of the great writers of the twentieth century. As Martin Amis has written "The variety, force and richness of Nabokov’s perceptions have not even the palest rival in modern day fiction. To read him in full flight is to experience stimulation that is at once intellectual, imaginative and aesthetic, the nearest thing to pure sensual pleasure that prose can offer"

The Look of the Film
THE LUZHIN DEFENCE is set on the Italian Lakes in the late 1920s with flashbacks to Luzhin’s childhood in St. Petersburg. The film was shot for eight weeks on location in Italy with the interiors and flashbacks being shot in Budapest.

The hotel location in Italy is the Villa Erba in Cernobbio on the banks of Lake Como. An ornate nineteenth century villa, set in acres of beautifully maintained park overlooking the lake, the villa was the childhood home of Italian filmmaker Luciano Visconti. The location by the lake had to be beautiful and extremely opulent in order to satisfy guests such as Natalia’s mother Vera, and Geraldine James was bewitched by the location, “It’s completely stunning and films miraculously. That’s quite interesting, because some places you can’t quite capture on film, and I’ve seen some of the rushes and the background is almost distracting – this beautiful, shimmering water.”

The outside of the town hall and the local Italian streets were filmed in Bergamo where the production took over the citta vecchia for three days, hiring in many locals as extras.

Budapest also provided stunning locations for the film. The Town Hall interior was an old museum and several semi-abandoned buildings lent themselves to being dressed to depict both turn of the century St. Petersburg and twenties Italy.

Caroline Wood comments: “We were incredibly blessed with the weather in both locations. We had two weeks of beautiful autumnal sunshine when we did the Italian exteriors and then moved to Budapest and had unusually early snow. One of the big exterior days in Budapest was the cemetery scene. We had wanted to lay snow, but it was such a huge location that we could never have managed to do so. The production value that we have as a result of the sun and the snow is amazing considering it was an eight week shoot.”

Gorris is full of praise for Tony Burrough, the production designer, who “lifted the film to a larger scale than it originally set out to be. It benefited tremendously from the absolutely magnificent locations which Tony ensured gave it a scope which has an enormous amount of production value.”

Indeed Gorris continued her collaborative approach with the film’s crew and felt that the production profited from this style of filmmaking. Regarding the work of Bernard Lutic, the Director of Photography she comments: “It was the first time that I had worked with Bernard and I would be more than happy to work with him again. His work is stunning. He’s the most actor friendly cameraman I know. He gives the actors breathing space and follows their leads. This has immeasurably helped their performances.”

Gorris had collaborated with Jany Temime, the costume designer and Michaël Reichwein, the editor on several of her previous films. Says Gorris: “Jany is a warm, cross-cultural professional whose costumes show her experience and depth. She had to recreate turn of the century Russian dress as well as twenties fashion. She showed Natalia’s forward looking character by dressing her differently. Whilst her mother wears more traditional costumes, Natalia asserts her independence by wearing trousers and less conventional clothing.”

Regarding Reichwein she comments: “This is the third film on which we have collaborated. We get on tremendously well and work well together. I trust him implicitly which means that we take more risks together which I hope pays off in the final film.”

Starring John Turturro and Emily Watson, THE LUZHIN DEFENCE is directed by Marleen Gorris and written by Peter Berry from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov. Caroline Wood and Stephen Evans produce the film through Renaissance Films, with Louis Becker and Philippe Guez. Leo Pescarolo and Eric Robison are co-producers.