‘The Accompanist’

This 1993 French film is an assured, psychologically acute piece of filmmaking that uses classical music as an effective counter-melody. It emphasizes delicately the several kinds of fatalistic love stories director Claude Miller and co-writer Luc Beraud have fashioned from Nina Berberova’s novel. Romane Bohringer (pictured, with Julien Rassam) is impressive and devastating as a woman in the quiet grip of passion. She plays a tentative pianist and accompanist to a celebrated, self-confident soprano (Elena Safonova) who is living a life of privilege almost unimaginable in wartime Paris. Their collaboration turns into a complex symbiotic relationship more intricate than either woman anticipates (Cinemax Wednesday at 8 p.m.).