This film simply shouldn’t work, but it does. The direction, by the Polish duo Michal Englert and Malgorzata Szumowska, is superb, delicately balancing character development, drama, ridiculous scenarios, beautiful costume and set design, and wonderful compositions. The script makes bold choices too, with Brid Arnstein and Kasper Bajon joining the directors in adapting the biography The Gambler Wife by Andrew D. Kaufman. But the core of the magic here is the duo of Johnny Flynn (Emma.) and White Lotus’ Aimee Lou Wood. They make you believe in, and root for, preposterously flawed characters bonded together by love. Fyodor makes nearly every bad decision imaginable, but his flaws have such an almost childish innocence that we as an audience, and Anna as a character, want to stand by him and put him on a better path. Meanwhile Anna is trying to live the best life the social norms of the time would let her achieve, and succeeds in carving out her own space, despite being dragged into absurdity by her irresponsible husband. Aimee Lou Wood was a high point of the third season of White Lotus, and her performance here confirms her as a superstar in the making. But I also have to give a special mention to the delightfully weasely Christian Friedel (The Zone of Interest), who just lights up the screen with delightful villainous intrigue.
“They make you believe in, and root for, preposterously flawed characters bonded together by love.”
If there’s a minor flaw to the film it is that it is impossible to translate the real-life thrill and terror of gambling to the big screen. As an audience, we know that the outcome of each turn of the roulette wheel is preordained by the plot, so there is no drama to it at all. Still, the film doesn’t try to make high drama out of it — the point is not the suspense of the outcome but the very real grip that gambling had on Dostoevsky, and the effects this had on his and Anna’s lives, and his subsequent literary work.
The Idiot(s) is not for everyone. How many people say, “Hey, let’s go to the theater to see that absurdist Polish 19th-century comedy about Dostoevsky,” Maybe it is for a few percent of filmgoers at best. But I’m in that few percent, and for those of us who it is made for, it hits like a laser beam. This has cult classic written all over it, and I’m in the cult. If you’re on the fence, give it a chance. You will certainly find it to be unlike anything you’ve ever seen, and you just might find it to be a revelation.
The Idiot(s) had its Canadian premiere at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival.
"…This film simply shouldn't work, but it does."
