Genre: Drama
Runtime: 127 minutes
Year: 2017
Starring: Maryana Spivak, Yanina Hope, Alksey Rozin, Daria Pisareva, Matvey Novikov, Marina Vailyeva, Andris Keiss, Alksey Fateev, Maxim Stoianov, Varvara Shmykova
Description: A couple going through a divorce must team up to find their son who has disappeared during one of their bitter arguments.
Review: To this day Zhenya regrets giving birth to a child, she confesses to her new boyfriend. Her son is only a burden to her and the cold mother can only bring little love to her son. She scarcely looks after Alyosha and doesn’t even miss him after two days.
Father Boris is also too busy with his own things. Within his company it is not-done to be in a divorce and all employees are expected to have a family. While he listens to his colleague’s stories about the one employee who was divorced and lied about it, Boris’ new girlfriend is expecting a baby. The question is whether the baby has the same future as Alyosha.
As the title suggests, love is hard to find in this Russian drama. The adults are only dealing with their own problems and Alyosha is the child that suffers from it. He cries himself to sleep, as he hears yet another one of his parent’s fights, who are in the middle of a divorce. And then fate strikes when the boy disappears without a trace. The police see it as a runaway and Zhenya and Boris have to start a search for their child.
Filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev has already delivered a series of gems with “The Return” and “The leviathan” as his main achievements. In both feature films family ties played an important role, but nowhere did it get as cold and loveless as with Alyosha’s parents. While the boy did not know what to do with the new situation, his parents squabbled over the sale of their apartment.
“Loveless” is divided into two acts of approximately equal length. In the first part Zvyagintsev spends a lot of time showing the new lives of Zhenya and Boris. Like the characters, he sidetracks the childs and makes it disappear from the viewer’s memory. It makes the two parents extremely unsympathetic and selfish. Zhenya talks as little as possible about Alyosha and Boris is pushing his son way.
The second part focuses on the search for the lost child and has significantly more momentum. Understandably, for a moment the ex-lovers knew the rivalry together they have to see how they dealt with Alyosha. This makes the indistinctness, uncertainty and despair that they experience all the more poignant. Even if it’s a little too late
Zvyagintsev shows us a modern Russia, in which relationships can be as loose as they are with us in the West. He starts his story somewhere in 2012 and compares it to political events in his own county, the United States and Ukraine.
The images the filmmaker presents us with are powerful and tranquil, starting with steruile shots of a snowy city. The serene camera movements do not miss their effect. Zvyagintsev introduces us to the new Russia and is sometimes not very subtle, for example when Zvenya runs on the balcony on the treadmill dressed in a tracksuit with the word ‘Russia’ on it.
It symbolizes the Russia of individualism, in which little is looked at and family life is less and less the cornerstone of society. A powerful state with a resolute leader. But even stripped of this political and social charge, “Loveless” is a strong drama that meticulously addresses the loss of core values such as fidelity, caring and love. With attention to what initially appear to be side issues, some hints to the misplaced focus of Zhenya and Boris.
Rating: 4/ 5
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