While watching Frederick Wiseman’s “Un Couple” — the legendary documentarian’s first fictional drama— a different literary giant comes to mind besides the ones whose mercurial marriage is depicted on screen. The film’s fickle love recalls a verse from Latin poet Catullus, undoubtedly familiar to anyone who studied the language in school: “what a woman says to her ardent lover should be written in wind and running water.”

The woman in question in “Un Couple” is Sophia Tolstoy, wife of legendary Russian novelist Leo, as embodied in the film by French actress Nathalie Boutefeu.

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