An irritatingly dysfunctional family is going through a painful divorce when suddenly everything changes. Loveless is a movie that starts off as a serious drama based on characters and relationships but soon becomes an agonizing thriller that keeps you at the edge of your seat till the end. Andrey Zvyagintsev [Leviathan (2014)] received the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Festival for his family drama that seems so familiar yet so distant depending on your own personal experiences.Winter is coming in Russia and while kids return home after a hard school day to find their families waiting for them lovingly, little Alyosha (the talented Matvey Novikov who steals the show despite his small appearance) comes home to a hostile battlefield. His mother Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) is all but tender to him, shouting and calling him names, not so much out of hate after a fight but out of indifference, and his father Boris (Aleksey Rozin) is nowhere to be found.
We soon learn that Zhenya and Boris are getting a divorce and for that they want to sell their appartment as soon as possible. Little Alyosha seems normally affected by their decision, as any child in his condition would be, but in reality things are much worse. His parents passionately loathe each other and as they fight, one can easily understand that Zhenya blames her husband for their problems while Boris seems tired of it all and just wants to get the divorce over with. As they angrily discuss in the middle of the night, it becomes apparent that they both want to restart their lives with other people, yet there is no room for their son. Boris wants to send him to his ex-mother-in-law's while Zhenya would like to enroll him to a boarding school. There is one small tragic detail during this incident: Alyosha listens to this fight crying silently in the bathroom and becoming aware of the fact that he is unwanted by both his parents; a heart-breaking scene that still haunts me.
The next day, everything seems normal, or as normal as can be: Alyosha and his mother have another fight as she criticizes him once more for the smallest of reasons and he runs to school not saying goodbye. His father, on the other hand, is once again absent but instead arrives at work fearing that should his divorce be known to his religious boss he will become redundant; he then meets his girlfriend who is already pregnant with his child - a new family in waiting. Zhenya has a life of her own: her job, her hairdresser's appointment where she gossips about everything in her life besides her son, her mobile phone to which she seems so attached looking at the screen 24/7, her new rich boyfriend who loves her and her flaws.
No one cares about Alyosha. Except when that haven't seen him for two whole days and the criticality of the situation dawns upon them. That's when Loveless changes pace and the true movie starts. Did the boy run away? Was he kidnapped? And how will they find him?
Zvyagintsev has created an indirect critique on society, so hopelessly clinged to appearances, carnal pleasures and selfies that no one really cares about their partner or their supposedly loved ones. Everyone is deprived of love in this world: Zhenya's mother, a bitter woman who has learnt to live alone, Zhenya herself who was never shown affection by her mum, Zhenya and Boris who never truly cared for each other and then never even loved their own child. It is like this constant negative feeling that surrounded them ended up making them dead inside and because they did not care, life chose to give them a hard lesson.
Instead of coming together, however, to face this unimaginably tragic thing that has happened to them, they get even more apart; their animosity and hostility heighten despite the presence of people (volunteers who try to find Alyosha with search parties and flyers) who seem to care about their fellow man. And as their agony grows, so do their harmful feelings. Loveless shows a family that has reached the point of no return and a Russia barren of love and sentiment. Can there be any hope for atonement?
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