This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

It's a pity, but since "Tired by the sun", eastern European cinematography has lost a credit of trust. Previous year nominee for Oscar for best foreign language movie "East-West" and this year nominee from Russia (didn't make it to the "five best") "His wife's diary" are really well made and significantly acted movies. But they can't step into the same water. Even "Siberian Barber" three years ago had no chance to get a golden statue because of above mentioned film got it in 1995. But, honestly speaking, I can't say the euphoria (and interest at all) about incomprehensible Russian soul has gone. Soviet period keeps a lot of fates, a lot of personalities to make a good movie about. Ivan Bunin, Nobel Prize for literature winner, is just another example of that.Whole story is about last years of a great writer. But it's not just Bunin's search of inspiration for the creativity by the means of other lovers. It's even not a love and passion triangle or polygon in Bunin's house ("You love me, I love him, he loves Galya, Galya loves Margo"). It's not only a course of life result and fear of something that hasn't been written about. It's an unbearable nostalgia and homesickness of an outcast generation that has never got home again (Bunin is buried in the Russian cemetery at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois).Well directed (second movie at all for Alexei Uchitel), good casting (Andrei Smirnov as Bunin and Galina Tyunina as his wife), well tuned soundtrack and perfectly reflected mood of the time make tragic drama "His wife's diary" a very lyric, deeply philosophic and subtle movie.9/10