Loveless…

In his new movie Andrey Zvyagintsev, already awarded with Golden Lion in Venice for The Return (2003) and with a Best Foreign Film Golden Globe for Leviathan (2014), explores spiritual catastrophe of our modern lives. At Cannes film festival-2017 the film was awarded with the Jury Prize.

The title “Loveless” (2017) refers to the state of the relationship between the film’s two main characters Boris (Alexey Rozin) and Zhenya (Maryana Spivak), a couple of a thirty-something on the verge of divorcing. They have a son twelve-year-old good and quiet boy Alyosha (Matvey Novikov) which they have no intention of caring for after divorce. To finalize their story they are trying to sell off their apartment as quickly as possible. Boris is dating a younger, pretty and (already) pregnant woman; Zhenya is dating a wealthy older man. Once when the parents were out to date their new partners, Alyosha was leaving home without a trace… As always with Zvyagintsev, the audience is waiting for the ruthlessly unexpected ending of the film.

The film is not a “pitiless critique on Russia” (Telegraph.UK), it is not about “the bred-in-the-bone pathology of Russian society” (the Hollywood Reporter) it is not about “oppressive societies that clamp down on filmmaking” (Variety), it is a universal image of our modern society.

It is an opaque but pitiless critique on the postmodern capitalist society at large. This is a collective portrait of people who are lost in the ocean of callousness.