Loveless (MA). Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev. Starring: Maryana Spivak, Aleksey Rozin, Matvey Novikov, Marina Vasileva, Andris Keiss. 127 minutes
The defining, gut-punch moment of Russian auteur Zvyagintsev's (The Return, Leviathan) fifth feature comes just a dozen or so minutes in.
By the time it arrives cinematographer Mikhail Krichman has already established a tour-de-force formality that is central to the film's precise and compelling use of place and atmosphere to tell its story; mapping physical, three-dimensional space through angular shifts of his mostly still camera, each frame revealing new details that build upon those established by the previous one.
In this way we discover the front courtyard of a local school and its inhabitants, the ruddy river parkland that spans the distance to a nearby residential estate, and the rooms and hallways of the apartment that Zhenya (Spivak) and her estranged husband Boris (Rozin) are preparing to sell.
Boris has had an affair that has been ongoing for some time; as we are to discover, his much younger mistress Masha (Vasileva) is heavily pregnant with his child. Zhenya, too, has moved on, her lover Anton (Keiss) both older and relatively wealthier.
By this time, too, we know that the couple's young son, Alyosha (Novikov), is quickly becoming collateral damage in this bitterest of separations. Zhenya has described him as being too weepy in a way that is not manly and, when a vicious argument erupts between Zhenya and Boris over custody arrangements, it is not about who gets to keep their son, but who must be stuck with him.
Suddenly, the gut-punch; cut to a new angle, where Alyosha is revealed, silently sobbing, secretly listening to every vile remark about how unwanted he is.
"Loveless reveals one of the grimmest portraits of a failed marriage this reviewer has ever seen on film."
Zhenya and Boris spend the following day and more with their respective lovers. We are with them and so, like them, discover belatedly that Alyosha disappeared shortly after overhearing this screaming match.
As further reinforcement of the extent to which the parents' thoughts are with themselves and not with their son, their next conversation turns into yet another argument when Boris is reluctant to leave work in order to assist Zhenya in the search. For Zhenya's part, the boy has been missing two days before she even noticed.
Loveless reveals one of the grimmest portraits of a failed marriage this reviewer has ever seen on film. Zhengya confesses to her lover