Loveless/Нелюбовь (2017)

Writer/director Andrey Zvyagintsev has claimed Scenes from a Marriage is an inspiration for his film Loveless, his chillingly bleak film about the loss of family. This loss is both literal and relational. The film follows both the breakdown of a marriage and the story of the couples' son going missing. Spoilers: neither the love nor the son are recovered. That's not the point. The point is to explore these losses and their effects on us.

Zvyagintsev's film is lush in how it follows the already conflict oriented relationship between the boy's parents and the way this impacts the search for the boy. Zvyagintsev extrapolates this beyond their relationship and into Russian society in general, and beyond that into modern society. Loveless is about our disconnections, our disposable relations, our loneliness in our separations, our bitterness and anger. Yes it is that bleak and dark. And all of this is set against the backdrop of a missing child, a McGuffin here which perfectly captures the loss of what is most important.

What makes Loveless work so well is how Zvyagintsev doesn't wallow in the desolation, instead making it all feel so normal, so familiar. Life continues on, as it does, making it more challenging to bring about change. The story is depressing in how non-depressing it is. We accept it and move on. What is more discouraging than that?

Loveless is clever and sad, and a sharp examination of complacency in loss, filled with a number of quite lovely little moments.

Loveless
Starring: Maryanna Spivak, Aleksey Rozin
Writer/Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev