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Grade: C+

Verdict: An unsuccessful look at love, obsession and chess.

Details: Starring Emily Watson and John Turturro. Directed by Marleen Gorris. Rated PG-13 for some sensuality and thematic elements. One hour, 46 minutes.

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Review: Accomplished director Marleen Gorris (“Antonia's Line”) tackles Vladimir Nabokov in “The Luzhin Defence.” Like most filmmakers before her who've tried to translate the novelist to film, it doesn't turn out so well. The supple, punning wordplay of his prose eludes the movies' blunter visual medium.

“Defence” starts with a promising half-hour: We arrive at a beautiful hotel on Italy's Lake Como, seen through the eyes of Natalia (the always appealing Emily Watson), a young Russian woman who's reached the age where marriage is imperative — at least, in the opinion of her fluttery, bossy mother, Vera (Geraldine James).

Vera does her best to fix Natalia up with Stassard (Christopher Thompson), a suave and handsome count with a pedigree as attractive as his smile. But Natalia finds herself drawn instead to Luzhin (John Turturro), a peculiar loner with zero people skills.

He's at the hotel as one of the ranking champions gathered for a chess competition. His mind is so absorbed in working out strategy that he wanders around repeatedly dropping objects through a hole in his jacket pocket and absent-mindedly ordering dinner from a boy who comes up to his table seeking an autograph. He's the sort of guy who, when asked how long he's played chess, answers exactly: 9,263 days, four hours and five minutes.

That Natalia would find him appealing is more than a leap of faith; you find yourself wondering if she's as off-kilter as he is. As we watch her giving him emotional and sexual support for the upcoming tournament, it's easy to side with Vera. Turturro has never been afraid to give ugly, off-putting performances, but he almost works overtime here to make Luzhin seem repellent. The character is so bizarre that when a doctor declares that Luzhin has suffered a nervous breakdown, you wonder how he can tell the difference.

“Defence” peppers its main story with flashbacks of Luzhin's childhood as a boy whose growing love of chess gets problematically entwined with a tense romantic triangle that develops between his father, his wife and her sister. Chess and love become somehow both inextricable from each other, yet also mutually exclusive.

But these flashbacks don't really pay off in a way you expect, and when Luzhin's old chess teacher shows up, the movie becomes a slow-motion wreck.

This fellow, Valentinov (Stuart Wilson), is a hissable villain, lacking only a mustache to twirl, whose sole goal is to psych out Luzhin and make sure he loses the tournament. Like many things in the movie, his motivations are murky; he becomes a melodramatic plot device.

Other films have been much more successful at exploring the symbiotic relationship between the creative force and madness, such as “32 Short Films

About Glenn Gould,” “Shine” and Jane Campion's “An Angel at My Table.” By comparison, “The Luzhin Defence” forfeits the game.

— Steve Murray, (none)