Loveless

Olivia Watson
18th Apr 2018

Andrey Zvyagintsev's award winning film Lovelesss is a harrowing portrayal of familial decay and, indeed, of lovelessness. It's excellent, but it might break you.

Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes 2017 and nominated for Best Foreign Film at both the Golden Globes and the Academy Award, this latest offering from the esteemed and mildly controversial Russian director follows estranged couple Boris (Alexey Rozin) and Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) in the midst of a less than amicable divorce. Each has embarked on a new relationship and is eager to cut ties with their past. Caught in the centre is their twelve year old son Alyosha (Matvey Novikov), subject of parental dispute and evidently considered a burden by each of his parents.

In a bleak yet uncomfortably familiar manner, the film follows the complex practicalities of separation that Boris and Zhenya are bitterly navigating, with a subtle undercurrent of commentary on Russian society, conflicting morals and distrust in authority.  The three leads are brilliant. Rozin and Spivak give chillingly good performances and Novikov's Alyosha will break your heart.

With any affection that once was now long lost and with tension excruciatingly tangible, the couple are unexpectedly brought together by the disappearance of Alyosha one morning and the subsequent missing person case they pursue with the volunteer search and rescue squad. The police, it seems, are under resourced and of little help.

This is preceded by an agonising scene as Alyosha witnesses his parents' disdain for him. Matvey Novikov gives a heart wrenching display of emotion in a moment that solidifies the tone of the film; the sheer devastation of an unloved child will be a difficult image to erase from your mind.

"Our post-modern era is a post-industrial society inundated by a constant flow of information received by individuals with very little interest in other people as anything else than a means to an end. These days, it’s every man for himself" - Zvyagintsev.

There is a hint of humour, albeit dark, in the terrifically real, mundane images of businesspeople crowded silently in lifts, cheeky camera angles of the workplace cafeteria service line and shoulder-to-shoulder commuters silently engrossed in their mobile phones.

On the whole, however, smiles are scarce. Loveless is an utterly devastating depiction of a family that is breaking, love that is lost in the throes of resentment, and the anguish of a child lost in the middle of it all.

Loveless opens in Australian theatres April 25