Russia’s film community has a love/hate relationship with director Andrey Zvyagintsev. His films had always featured an undercurrent of criticism for contemporary Russian politics and their effects on the wider populace, but this was amplified by his widely acclaimed 2014 film Leviathan. Despite premiering to rapturous acclaim, it was met with bemusement by the Russian Ministry of Culture, who suggested a ban on all films showing Russia in a less than patriotic light following its release.
A brief ban was soon overturned when the film was submitted as Russia’s entry to the Best Foreign Language category at the Academy Awards. Any controversy over a lack of patriotism must have never come to fruition, as three years later Zvyagintsev is back, and more damning of his home country than ever before, with Loveless.
Do the Russians love their children too?
The self-obsessed and deeply unlikeable Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) is in the midst of an agonising divorce with Boris (Aleksey Rozin) – a divorce that has been in the cards since their marriage a decade earlier, which they only went ahead with because of Zhenya’s pregnancy. Twelve years later, they now both have new partners, with the only thing they appear to have in common being a shared disinterest in their own 12-year-old son, Alexey (Matvey Novikov). The pair consistently argue about him, within his earshot, leading him to constantly break down and cry – Zhenya’s heartfelt response to his emotional duress is to complain that he isn’t a “real man”, just like his father, with hopes to send him to boarding school as soon as possible so he’s out of her hair.
One night, when both parents are at the homes of new lovers, Alexey goes missing with no explanation – only before getting a phone call from the child’s school saying he hasn’t attended for three days. Despite hating each other’s guts, Zhenya and Boris reluctantly decide to cooperate in finding Alexey, which turns out to be easier said than done due to a police force who would prefer to hand the case over to ineffective child protection volunteers.
In just a brief plot synopsis, it is easy to convey exactly how emotionally unflinching Zvyagintsev’s film really is. However, despite his protestations that this isn’t a political film (comments likely made to avoid censorship in Russia), it’s hard to take much of the brutal narrative at face value due to how sharply it acts as an allegory for many of the political developments that have taken place during Putin’s third term as President. Many commentators have pointed out that a storyline about two parents not caring about their child’s disappearance until he has gone missing is a comment on how Russia is effectively “abandoning its children”. However, the director has merely stated that the only intentional commentary is on corruption in the police force.
This seems like a deliberately tailored statement to avoid scrutiny at home, as it is hard to view Loveless without the spectre of Putin’s “traditionalist” policies looming large over the gloomy portrayal of society presented here. The character of Zhenya is introduced openly belittling her young son’s manliness, which becomes a recurrent theme, and a very blatant commentary on the effects Russian hyper-masculinity has on a young man’s mental health – every time the child is casually mocked by his mother, it is the cinematic equivalent of tirelessly prodding a bleeding open wound.
Politically powerful, or too heavy handed?
However, not all the critiques of Russian society are as successful in their integration to this narrative. The film is set between 2012 and 2014, with many scenes soundtracked by state sponsored Russian news broadcasts, leading up to the annexation of Crimea – which feels increasingly like a cheap ploy for political relevancy, due to how these themes don’t have any overt allegorical counterparts within the central narrative, or at least none that call themselves out to Western audiences.
But this isn’t always the case. Elsewhere in the film, Zvyagintsev goes overboard with obvious allegories, soundtracking one emotionally torturous car journey between the divorced couple with Bring Me the Horizon’s Sleepwalking– a genuinely unexpected music cue, but one that feels too on the nose for the scene when reading its lyrical content.
The narrative itself becomes so cold and detached, despite infrequent moments of blackly comic levity, that I eventually found myself unengaged with the narrative at face value, searching for deeper political commentary lying underneath. This eventually proved frustrating, due to how much political discourse was included in plain sight, in manners that didn’t really correlate with the themes in the narrative, or add up to a significant pay off. All it did was present a quietly unsettling portrait of a populace emotionally numbed by dispiriting propaganda, which still feels somewhat overwrought, even though it achieves this successfully.
Where the film does shine is through the uniformly excellent performances from the ensemble cast, particularly Maryana Spivak, who manages to breathe life into one of the most detestable screen characters of the millennium. She’s constantly scrolling through her social media newsfeeds instead of engaging with her supposed loved ones, only surfacing to communicate her utter disdain for her child and former husband. Spivak manages to underplay the role as much as possible, making her feel like a realistic nightmare, instead of a bitchy caricature; the sheer obliviousness in the line readings just makes her brutal emotional punishments hit all the harder.
Loveless: Conclusion
Although hailed as another masterpiece by many critics, I can’t help but feel Loveless is a step down from Leviathan, which managed to perfectly integrate damning political commentary with an upsetting family drama.
It’s undeniably worth seeing for its performances, but the apparent insight into corruption in Putin’s Russia feels somewhat lacking this time around, with the storyline too cold to get truly invested in on a face value level. One thing is for certain, however: this movie really lives up to its title.
What are the best political allegories in film?
Loveless is released in the UK on Friday, 9th February 2018. A US release date is to be announced, via Sony Pictures Classics. All international release dates are here.
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