Often, it makes sense for a filmmaker to present his political commentary with a light touch, letting his story’s inherent drama speak louder than his talking points. Other times, the sledgehammer approach has significant benefits. Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose last film was the Oscar-nominated Leviathan, has crafted a slow-burn moral drama that starts off as the portrait of a loveless marriage and the unhappiness it spawns in the form of a distraught 12-year-old child. But as Loveless rolls along, its scope widens, becoming a blistering commentary on the callous society that Zvyagintsev sees around him. What’s the point of subtlety when your argument is this persuasive and this angry?
Much in the style of his stripped-down 2011 drama Elena, Loveless is all perfectly composed, slightly icy images and tightly drawn characters, the plot only gradually asserting itself. Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Alexey Rozin) are counting down the days until their divorce—barely able to live under the same roof, they both have lovers on the side, and neither seems particularly concerned what will become of their boy Alyosha (Matvey Novikov) once they separate. Send him to a boarding school? Pawn him off on the other parent? It’s not that they dislike Alyosha—it’s just that he’s a daily, physical reminder of a hateful marriage they rushed into once Zhenya got pregnant.
For much of its first half, Loveless chronicles this couple through the prism of their other relationships. Boris is happily involved with a sexy younger woman (Marina Vasilyeva) who’s pregnant with his child. Zhenya has stumbled into contentment with an older, very successful man (Andris Keishs) whom she loves—in fact, she confesses to him, he’s the only person she’s ever loved. Whatever mistakes they made while falling for one another, Zhenya and Boris seem to have found people at last who give them what they need.
Zvyagintsev isn’t judgmental about this failed couple. Working with his regular cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, Zvyagintsev applies his usual cool, detached style to the material, quietly observing these people as they begin the next phase of their lives away from one another.
That’s when a quiver of dread enters into the picture. They learn that Alyosha—who, come to think of it, has disappeared from Loveless over the last hour—hasn’t been at school the last two days. Too wrapped up in starting their new relationships, Zhenya and Boris just sort of assumed the other parent had seen the boy recently. They’re concerned about his whereabouts, but there’s a strange remove in their reactions. Yes, they’re upset—but they’re not as upset as one might expect parents to be.
What follows, like in Elena, is a brilliantly methodical, logical procedural. In Elena, the plot concerned a wife’s desire to kill her rich, older husband and then try to get away with her crime. In Loveless, Zvyagintsev goes into detail about how a missing-child case would play out. There’s a bloodless lack of melodrama to Zvyagintsev’s story. That’s partly because the characters’ local Russian police force is as bureaucratic and unsympathetic as any around the globe. The cops will look for the kid, but they figure he’ll come back on his own. (Unhelpfully, one law enforcement officer suggests they check the mall since young people seem to like it.)
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