Vanya on 42nd Street
(1994)
OK, call me a Philistine (last syllable rhymes with "dine" as Wallace Shawn pronounces it here), but this is the way I like theater: on film. And distanced, but just a bit. And adapted by David Mamet. And directed by Louis Malle. With (naturally, in a Malle film) a jazz score (this time by Joshua Redman).
My only objection is that Sonja is apparently supposed to be plain at best (yes, that's right: I've never seen any other production of Uncle Vanya; did you not already get that?), and Brooke Smith completely misses the mark in that respect; in fact, stunning as it may seem, I found her more beautiful even than My Future Wife Julianne Moore. But that's a small price to pay for art.
Footnote: as far as I know, the first film I've ever seen with an appearance by someone who's written a cookbook I own (Madhur Jaffrey). (Actually, I've also seen her in Heat and Dust, Six Degrees of Separation, and Wolf, but I didn't have the cookbook then. Oops, wait a minute: she was also in Prime, and I definitely had the cookbook by then.)
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