Nathalie Boutefeu in A Couple (Zipporah Films)

For nearly six decades, Frederick Wiseman has been making extraordinary documentaries through the simplest of means, recording the day-to-day activities of various institutions—a mental hospital and high school; London’s National Gallery and the New York Public Library; and Belmont Race Track and Central Park—while creating unforgettable images and insightful moments through his singular, observational style.

He achieves something similar—but also, crucially, different—in A Couple, his first nonfiction film in 20 years, since The Last Letter. This 63-minute feature stars French actress Nathalie Boutefeu as Sophia Tolstoy, wife of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. In a solo tour de force, Boutefeu recites, narrates, and quotes from Sophia’s letters to Leo as well as some of Leo’s thoughts and writings about his wife. In its own quiet yet commanding way, A Couple is a portrait of an unequal marriage: Sophia endures Leo’s scabrous insults, his blaming her when things go wrong for him personally or professionally, and his refusal to let her have her own friends.

As in his memorable documentary work, Wiseman’s camera simply records Sophia as she is, speaking while wandering amid the rich splendors of the large Tolstoy estate. The wonders of nature surrounding her—lovely wooded areas, fields of grass, magnificent seaside cliffs—are intercut with enough close-ups of water, trees, birds, frogs, and flowers to give Terrence Malick a run for his money. But Wiseman has beautifully choreographed Boutefeu’s movements through these landscapes. Her descriptions of a life of emotional torment that has replaced her romantic fantasies of marriage gain a cumulative power by such awe-inspiring surroundings.

For example, there’s a sequence late in the film in which Sophia sits on a huge mound of accumulated seaweed near the shore and recites a particularly critical letter Leo wrote to her. Amid the crashing of the approaching waves, she doesn’t yield an inch, despite being emotionally battered. She forcefully but calmly replies to him (and to us—it’s one of several instances where Sophia looks directly into the camera, making us commiserate with her even more strongly) about being his punching bag and scapegoat for all the miseries life has supposedly visited upon him.

The sumptuous but understated photography is by John Davey. Along with a rich mélange of natural sounds, there’s also a well-chosen piece of melancholy Mendelssohn piano music that plays over the end credits, but it’s Boutefeu’s performance that makes A Couple notable. Her intensity matches the emotion in Sophia’s words and feelings, but it’s never overstated. Instead, Sophia’s passion is made all the more persuasive by Boutefeu’s elegant restraint, along with that of her director.