The Idiot(s), with its provocative title riffing on the name of Fyodor M Dostoyevsky’s classic novel, is the biggest, most ambitious project so far for Polish directorial duo Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert. One of the Toronto International Film Festival's Special Presentations, the movie is a bold take on the period and costume dramedy, telling the lesser-known story of Dostoyevsky’s second wife, Anna (Aimee Lou Wood, from Sex Education and The White Lotus), who went from assisting her future husband to becoming the first solo female publisher in Russian history. The co-directors adapt a literary biography, The Gambler Wife by Andrew D Kaufman, for the script in collaboration with Kasper Bajon and Brid Arnstein, making for a truly polyphonic film that celebrates the joy of filmmaking and creating art against all odds.

Anna takes centre stage in the movie but shares an equal amount of screen time with said husband, played by the ever-convincing Johnny Flynn, whose disgruntled attitude and gambling addiction are bringing the young family closer to ruin. Anna and Fyodor flee their debts in Russia to land in Germany in the late 1860s with the hope that a change of scenery might speed up the writing process. Money is tight and the pages are blank, to the amusement of their Westernised compatriot Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (Christian Friedel), and the small town of Baden-Baden proves a suitable stage for some literary rivalry.

In addition, Fyodor seems to have taken a liking to his nemesis’s companion (the irresistible Vicky Krieps), much to the annoyance of his exemplary wife. Krieps embodies the temptress role like the “gazelle” Fyodor sees her as, prancing close enough to stir trouble for the pitiful author. Paradoxically, it’s his weakness for roulette tables and women that makes him both despisable and likeable – there is something wonderfully entertaining about seeing the negative sides of a male genius while an unsung woman is uplifted. The Idiot(s) thus follows in the footsteps of Susanna Nicchiarelli’s Miss Marx and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla.

Szumowska and Englert are endlessly brave in choosing a variety of projects to showcase their idiosyncratic approach to world-building. In The Idiot(s), that equates to an exquisite, slightly anachronistic wardrobe, swear words, foot worship and flogging, as well as a production design meticulously crafted to match the eccentric tone of the film, much to the viewer’s delight. Intrigue, as much as the historical reclamation of Anna’s character, is a narrative drive here, and as typical for Szumowska, the most serious condemnations have a tongue-in-cheek feel to them. The film world is held together by the marvellous quartet of performances and, in particular, the slightly toxic (main) couple – Anna is as capable as Fyodor is useless, but their compatibility is undeniable, emphasised by Wood and Flynn’s synergistic dance as leads. It doesn’t matter that a period flick about Russians in Germany is entirely in English and that each actor keeps their own accent for the part; what we have here is a flamboyant, effervescent kind of filmmaking that owes its fidelity to Anna Dostoyevskaya and nobody else.

The Idiot(s) was produced by London-based Goldrush Pictures in co-production with France’s Hype Studios. The Match Factory handles the film’s international sales.