‘Loveless‘ made in 2017 by Andrey Zvyagintsev is the story of a divorce. Divorce movies often belong to the genre of the melodrama, sometimes they are romantic comedies (especially those that end in reconciliation), or court dramas. One of the rules shared by almost all movies with such topic is that if there are children in the story, their fate is protected in one way or another. ‘Loveless‘ is a very different film from all the others I’ve seen in this genre. The title actually summarizes the whole story. We are witnessing the breakup of a loveless marriage in a loveless world. The film is a metaphor for today’s Russia with film director and script co-writer Andrey Zvyagintsev demonstratively introducing background news that locate exactly the events that take place in the film at the end of 2012 in a city about three hours drive from Moscow. But the story is universal and what we see on the screen could happen in any other developed country in the world today.
A Beatles song warns us of the dangers of a world without love. This is the world described in ‘Loveless‘. The lead heroes are Zhenya and Boris, a middle-class couple, caught in a marriage that began as a youthful relationship followed by the ‘accident’ of the birth of an unwanted child, Aliosha, who has reached the age of 12. We catch the marriage in the final stage of its disintegration, the one in which the common house is sold and the universe of the child is destroyed. Aliosha does not seem to lack anything from a material perspective, but emotionally he seems to lack everything. The two spouses are already engaged in extra-marital relationships and neither of them seems interested in keeping the child in care. The scene in which Aliosha listens with a mute cry to the parents’ quarrel is anthological, heartbreaking. When Aliosha disappears, Zhenya and Boris are brought together by the search procedures, but does that mean a reunion?
The cinematography and soundtrack of the film are exceptional, so is also the description of the social, professional, material environments in which the heroes live their lives. The metallic colors of the buildings and interiors and the frozen natural landscapes are the ideal settings for a world where feelings seem mechanized and inter-human communication takes place mainly through telephone screens. The two actors cast in the main roles, Maryana Spivak and Aleksey Rozin, have the not so trivial mission to interpret their roles naturally but without gaining undeserved empathy from the audience. They manage to do it brilliantly. ‘Loveless‘ is a complex and expressive film about a world in which if we do not already live completely, we are in danger of reaching to live in a short time. Recommended viewing.