Critics reviews

I prefer Loznitza’s imperfections to the perfectly mastered authorial tone of a consecrated masterpiece like Nelyubov (Loveless). I suspect that Andrey Zvyagintsev does not like his characters – especially not the women – and treats them as mere symptoms of “what is wrong in contemporary Russia”.

[Zvyagintsev's wide-screen] technique peaked with the searing anti-Putin allegory Leviathan, Zvyagintsev's best film to date, in which his compositions take on a political dimension, making the characters seem like pawns in a system beyond their control. His latest feature, Loveless, is no less cold or bitter than Leviathan and uses its wide-screen frame almost as effectively. The characters tend to be isolated from each other, the physical space between them reflecting their emotional distance.

As George Orwell famously wrote in "1984," "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." Without a past to rely on, people are cut off from sources of strength, community, fellow feeling. Children are the ultimate victims. . . . "Loveless" is a hopeless film, and in the current atmosphere in Russia, admitting hopelessness is a radical act. "Loveless" is not afraid to call things by their proper names.

Zvyagintsev rhymes stifling domestic rituals—including those of the obviously doomed relationship that Boris is forging with Masha—with the office protocol at the corporation where Boris works. Lunchtime has rarely looked so uncomfortable in cinema as it does here. Zvyagintsev emphasizes the assembly-line monotony of the cafeteria and the ill-fitting suits worn by men who worry that divorces could destroy their legacy at the faceless corporation that employs them.

Big-picture thinking has earned Zvyagintsev a spot on the world stage, with Cannes competition slots and prizes. He belongs there: on a shot-for-shot, cut-for-cut basis, his output could be taken for the work of a young(ish) master, a grim perfectionist in the Haneke mould. But for all their size and spaciousness – a stately parade of carefully strategised widescreen compositions pointing up barely concealed subtexts – his movies also feel curiously puny. They shrink when they should expand.

Few living filmmakers put as much care and intentionality into their storytelling craft as the emergent Russian master Andrey Zvyagintsev. . . . The camera in Loveless doesn't just invisibly serve character and story, it functions as its own narrative device—the omniscient eye.

In a way that recalls R.W. Fassbinder's adversarial relationship with Germany, his films are very much critiques of Russia, its soul and contemporary discontents. For that reason, "Loveless" can be seen not just as a drama of marital dysfunction but as a fierce metaphorical indictment of the society that produced its characters.

With its fastidious framing and angry-tough temperament, "Loveless" (a title distilled in a single image of a child's violated, unclaimed corpse) earns its air of careful foreboding. Again and again, Mikhail Krichman's camera creeps forward as if about to reveal something frightful while we stare, hearts in mouths. The trick is shamelessly manipulative, but it lends the movie an ominousness that's powerfully magnetic.

Two representative moments define Andrei Zvyagintsev's Loveless — and they are among the most devastating, harrowing things I've ever seen on a screen. I won't spoil what they are, as one relies on the element of surprise and the other happens quite late. But their raw emotionalism both complicates and deepens Zvyagintsev's film, which hovers between personal drama and deep political allegory.

Zvyagintsev captures domestic violence, or rather, captures the violence in the domestic, in cold-blooded fashion. He doesn't pity the child, nor does he vilify the parents. He doesn't ask us to identify with or against anyone. He doesn't allow us to regard the tragedies of domestic life, the selfishness of parental labor, as some kind of Russian exclusivity. The setup feels unnervingly familiar from the very beginning... Think of the film as Scenes from a Marriage for the age of social media.

For many viewers, what will remain stuck in their minds is not Loveless' critique of Putinism, but rather its relentless misogyny: Zhenya is depicted as an unredeemable harridan and, as a consequence, she emerges as more of a villain than any politician or soulless oligarch. Though Zvyagintzev inserts some news reports detailing the Russian government's disdain for the Ukrainian regime..., they end up trivializing the political malaise they are purportedly illuminating.

Andrey Zvyagintsev's Nelyubov (Loveless) forms a fascinating duplet with A Gentle Creature, both for the similarities and the differences between the two filmmakers. As opposed to Loznitsa's deliberate positioning as an heir to the dissidents-in-exile of the Soviet era, issuing a strident, lacerating assault on the power system in place under Putin, Zvyagintsev has adopted a nimbler relationship with the Russian state.