Loveless – Nelyubov (2017)

Directed by: Andrey Zvyagintsev | 127 minutes | drama | Actors: Maryana Spivak, Yanina Hope, Aleksey Rozin, Daria Pisareva, Matvey Novikov, Marina Vasilyeva, Andris Keiss, Aleksey Fateev, Maxim Stoianov, Varvara Shmykova

‘Loveless’, the fifth film by Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, for which he won the Jury Prize in Cannes in 2017, starts with ducks in a pond. It feels like the camera stays focused on this peaceful scene for several minutes, before picturing 12-year-old Alyosha (Matvey Novikov) on her way home from school. There is a certain menace about it, as if Alyosha could have a strange accident at any moment. But he arrives neatly at home, where his mother Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) immediately starts offending him. He just gets in the way while she tries to sell the apartment.

What happens: Zhenya and her husband Boris (Aleksey Rozin) are about to divorce. Both already have a new lover. He a young blond girl who is already pregnant with him, she a wealthy older man with an adult daughter from a previous relationship. A normal conversation between Zhenya and Boris no longer seems possible. The lovelessness radiates when they are together in a room. Zhenya is only on her cell phone while she accuses Boris of everything. He in turn finds the divorce difficult, because his arch-conservative boss does not tolerate unmarried employees and therefore has to fear for his job. Neither of them want custody of Alyosha, because he would get in the way of their new life.

The quarreling couple has absolutely no eyes for their son. In a masterly move, Zvyagintsev shows that the poor lad gets it all, by following Zhenya scolding Boris from the toilet with the camera and revealing a silently crying Alyosha when the living room door is slammed behind it. When he indicates at breakfast the next morning that he doesn’t want any more, his mother assumes he means the food without looking up from her cell phone. It is only when she receives a call from school a day later that Alyosha has not shown up, that she realizes the seriousness of the situation. The boy has disappeared without a trace.

What follows is a lingering quest, where you start to believe less and less that Alyosha will ever end up. Moreover, any hope that Boris and Zhenya will be able to get closer through their shared grief is also slowly being crushed. Most of all, they try to blend in with their new relationships. In doing so, however, it becomes increasingly clear that they are completely incapable of loving, let alone receiving love, even with their new partners. They have also been taught undesiredness themselves. Zvyagintsev thus shows a Russia in which lovelessness is passed on from generation to generation like a contagious disease.

During the events, the director uses radio and TV fragments to play a message about the so-called approaching end of the world in 2012 (according to an interpretation of the Mayan calendar). The protagonists do not react consciously to it, but it is almost inevitable that they somehow internalize the doomsday. As if they unknowingly choose to be irretrievably lost, while maintaining the outward appearance of a happy life. If at the end of the film the same pond is shown as in the beginning, nothing seems to have changed. Besides loveless, also hopeless. It is a harsh message, but beautifully packaged.