Reckless abandonment
LOVELESS, drama, rated R, Center for Contemporary Arts, in Russian with subtitles, 3 chiles
Andrei Zvyagitsev (Leviathan) is not crazy about any of his characters, nor about the country or the world they live in. He opens this film on a bleak wintry Russian landscape, and then plunges us into a scene of domestic discord plucked from the circles of hell. Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Aleksey Rozin) are a middle-class couple in the midst of a very ugly breakup, but still sharing an apartment. Boris’s main concern is that his ultra-religious boss will fire him if he gets divorced. Neither parent seems to have much affection for their twelve-year-old son Alyosha (Matvey Novikov), whose custody forms the dark heart of much of their fighting, though not in the way you might imagine. Neither parent wants him, and neither takes much care not to be overheard as the little boy weeps alone in his bedroom.
Both Zhenya and Boris have new romances going. She’s got herself a wealthy businessman (Andris Keiss) and a passionate sex life; he’s got a clinging and pregnant blonde (Marina Vasileva). Both spend a good deal of their time off wallowing in these new delights, so neither notices right away that Alyosha has gone missing.
The movie occupies itself with the setup and the blossoming romances for most of the first hour, establishing the perspectives and the priorities of this bitter, bickering couple and the new lives they are moving on to. We’re near the halfway mark when they discover that the kid is gone, and start the manhunt, or boyhunt, in motion. The police are not much use. Zvyagitsev seems to feel that Russian state institutions are pretty worthless, and if you want to get something done, you should put it in private hands. At the cops’ suggestion, the parents turn to a volunteer organization that searches for missing children, and most of the second half is taken up with their tensely methodical search.
The parents at last come to seem distraught, though it would be hard to say whether love or inconvenience drives the feeling. A visit to her slatternly mother (Nataliya Potapova) reveals that Zhenya comes by her meanness honestly. And as you observe the new relationships onto which she and Boris are embarking, you would not wager big money on them turning out much better.
Reports from background media keep peppering us with news of impending doom, per the 2012 end-times Mayan calendar and the Russian incursion into the Ukraine. Zvyagintsev’s Russia is a loveless, brutish place; and, as a last image of Zhenya in a Russia tracksuit jogging on a treadmill suggests, it is going nowhere fast. — Jonathan Richards