Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Talent: Maryana Spivak, Alexey Rozin, Matvey Novikov
Released: 9 February
Philip Larkin has that great line about ‘Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf.’ It’s a fitting line for a review of Loveless, a film about seemingly unbreakable and never ending cycles, how one generation passes on its toxicity to the next and so on, and so on.
The title of Zvyagintsev’s follow-up to 2014’s spectacular Leviathan could just as easily be alluding to the landscape as it could the central figures within. This Russia is a cold and hard, impersonal, unforgiving and ultimately loveless landscape.
12 year old Alyosha (Matvey Novikov), a very fragile child, is being ground down by the crushing weight of his parents’ divorce and their simmering hatred for each other. His mother Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) is relentless in her continual verbal assault of husband Boris (Alexey Rozin), who in turn draws a thoroughly browbeaten and worn down figure. With all three still coexisting in the same two bedroom apartment, the point of no return has long expired and both are at the real mud-slinging stage, back and forth, whenever they can.
In an odd reversal of what now seems typical of a divorce on screen, neither parent wants responsibility of the child. During one horrendous argument where this unusual predicament is being loudly discussed in the kitchen, a door is closed over only to reveal Alyosha on the other side listening intently, his features in a silent scream, tears streaming down his face. It was this unforgettable scene that Zvyagintsev initially built the entire film around. It is the epitome of utter devastation and was eerily reminiscent of young Florya’s bone hollow face in Russian classic Come and See.
After Alyosha runs away, the film ultimately pivots away from him and segues back and forth between the lives of the parents and their latest partners, exploring new found happiness and the raptures of new sex. As adults reborn, their filial duties are dismissed or indeed ignored. When the alarm bells are raised and a search party coordinated, both parents pull themselves away from the fog of abandon and back to reality.
The overspill of anger and resentment is generational throughout and we are given a glimpse into Zhenya’s family life when we meet her mother; a hardened, uncaring and paranoid woman. There is no union here between anyone for the sake of the missing child and she refuses to help in the search for her grandson. This begets another cycle of continued hatred culminating in an extraordinary scene between Zhenya and Boris in the car returning from the Grandmother’s house. If this is the real face of divorce, Loveless is a harrowing spectacle that completely diminishes all divorce dramas that have come before, propelled by the exemplary performances of Spivak and Rozin.
There is something to be said about the need for repeated viewing to really understand a film and unravel its many layers, and perhaps this is one such film. Loveless is breathtaking and intelligently crafted but it’s also a complete emotional upheaval and hard to justify putting oneself through again.
Words: Shane O’Reilly
