A fading country estate, home to members of a fading gentry, provides the autumnal setting of “the best Uncle Vanya I've ever seen” (Woody Allen), directed with true panache by Andrei Konchalovsky (The First Teacher; Siberiade). A retired professor brings his much younger bride back to an estate he intends to sell; it's difficult to tell what shocks the quiet Uncle Vanya and his intellectual friend Doctor Astrov more: the professor's desire to sell the place, or their own desire for his bride. Konchalovsky stages the dacha as a house of ruins and shadows, lived in by equally ruined people; as the virtuoso opening sequence makes clear, this world is about to end, and end violently. “An exceedingly graceful, beautifully acted production that manages to respect Chekhov as a man of his own time, as well as . . . Russia's saddest, gentlest, funniest, and most compassionate revolutionary playwright” (Vincent Canby, New York Times).