Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.
Loveless is a devastating Zvyagintsev film that operates at the highest level of European art cinema. The plot is a brilliantly constructed indictment of modern Russian society through the prism of a collapsing family, with the missing child serving as a powerful metaphor for a generation abandoned by self-absorbed parents. The acting is uniformly excellent, with Maryana Spivak and Aleksey Rozin delivering raw, unsentimental performances. Cinematography by Mikhail Krichman is stunning — cold, precise frames that mirror the emotional frigidity of the characters, with memorable shots of wintry forests and desolate urban landscapes. Novelty earns a 3 because while Zvyagintsev's voice is distinct, the film follows familiar territory for him (Leviathan, Elena) in its socially critical, cold-realist Russian drama mode; it perfects rather than distinctly reinvents. The ending, while thematically coherent and bleak, feels somewhat expected given the film's trajectory — Zvyagintsev offers no catharsis or surprise, landing with the weight of inevitability but not quite the shock of genuine revelation.