Maryana Spivak, Yanina Hope, Aleksey Rozin
Andrey Zvyagintsev follows up Leviathan (2014), his powerhouse tale of corruption in contemporary Russia, with the equally masterful Loveless, winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes.
Both a hypnotic thriller and an impassioned drama of spiritual crisis, it centres on the disappearance of a young boy.
Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Aleksey Rozin) are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and bitter recrimination. Already embarking on new lives, they are impatient to start again, even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha (Matvey Novikov) – when, after
witnessing one of their fights, he disappears.
In this brilliantly bleak and mysterious drama Zvyagintsev investigates the microcosm of familial dysfunction against wider societal malaise; aligning the internal apocalypse of divorce with the metaphysical ills of modern Russia.
Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev has produced another masterpiece […] a stark, mysterious and terrifying story of spiritual catastrophe
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian ∗∗∗∗