Loveless **** ½ / *****
Directed by: Andrey Zvyagintsev.
Written by: Oleg Negin and Andrey Zvyagintsev.
Starring: Maryana Spivak (Zhenya), Aleksey Rozin (Boris), Matvey Novikov (Alyosha), Marina Vasileva (Masha), Andris Keiss (Anton), Aleksey Fateev (Ivan), Artyom Zhigulin (Kuznetsov), Natalya Potapova (Mat Zheni), Anna Gulyarenko (Mat Mashi).
Loveless, the new film by Russian master Andrey Zvyagintsev (whose last film Leviathan was even better) is many things at once. It is a film that deepens as it goes along, and becomes a portrait of modernity and technology and parenting, but also of a modern Russian society that is fully of apathy. The government institutions in the film are useless and uncaring – but then again, so are the parents. The film takes place mostly in 2012 – and the annexation of Crimea, and the rising tensions with Ukraine, play out in the background – on news reports, and TV – where they go half listened to or ignored. On one side there is an increasingly intolerant religious beliefs being forced down upon people, and on another side there is status and social climbing. All of these are contributing factor when a child goes missing.
That child is Alyosha, and his parents Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Aleksey Rozin) are the main characters in the film. Their marriage is all but over when the film begins – they’re trying to sell their apartment, and cannot wait to move on with their lives apart from each other. She’s found an older, richer boyfriend, and wants to move up the social ladder. He’s found a younger, more docile woman, who he has already got pregnant. They argue – loudly – because neither one of them want to take Alyosha – he’d be an inconvenience to them in their new lives, and would just get in the way. Zhenya is openly cruel to her son – saying he cries all the time to strangers looking at the apartment. IF Boris talks with him at all, we don’t see it. Alyosha knows very well he’s not wanted. When he does go missing, neither of his parents notice for two days – they’re busy off in their new lives, and forget about their old one. The police are no help at all, so they reach out to a group of civilian volunteers, who conduct the investigation themselves. This involves a lot of searches of cold apartment buildings, the surrounding forest, and an abandoned Soviet facility that has fallen into disrepair.
When the film opens, you think that both Zhenya and Boris are monsters – and to be honest, my opinion of them didn’t really grow more favorable throughout the film. Yet, what Zvyagintsev and his actors have done is to make more human throughout the film. The film doesn’t forgive their actions – but it does show how perhaps they became the people they have become. Boris works for a tech firm, in which he will be fired if anyone discovers he has had a divorce, so he is hoping that a quick divorce, and replacement of one wife and child with another will help. Zhenya is rarely without her phone, and takes many selfies throughout the film (she is hardly alone), and is in a world in which a woman’s primary economic power is still her body – which she uses for own security with her new partner, a rich, lonely man who tags along after her. When we meet her mother (played by Natalya Potapova in a memorable one scene performance), we understand even more why she married Boris in the first place.
Loveless is a heavy film – it is an emotional gut punch at times, including one of the most unforgettable shots of the year, where we see just how much Alyosha knows about his parents. It doesn’t get lighter throughout the film (there is only one minor moment of humor - a conversation about a fake wife Boris has with a co-worker). The rest of the film is a document of suffering – much like Leviathan was – and how easy it is for that suffering to go unnoticed, lessons unlearned, and for people to go back to their lives. The end of the film doesn’t off much in the way of way of hope for the future, or that anyone learned from the past. It is a film that once again confirms just how good Zvyagintsev is as a filmmaker – he’s one of the best around at combining the personal and the politic – with devastating results.
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