Loveless () is a 2017 drama film directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, who co-wrote it with Oleg Negin. The story concerns two separated parents, played by Maryana Spivak and Aleksey Rozin, whose loveless relationship has decayed into a state of bitterness and hostility. They are temporarily drawn back together after their only child goes missing and they attempt to find him.
The story was inspired by the search-and-rescue group Liza Alert and Zvyagintsev's desire to make a film about a family. He was originally interested in making a Russian reworking of the 1973 Swedish miniseries Scenes from a Marriage but could not obtain the rights. Loveless was produced with international support after the Russian government disapproved of Zvyagintsev's 2014 anti-corruption film Leviathan. As a result, Loveless is a co-production of Russia, France, Belgium and Germany. Cinematographer Mikhail Krichman used a realistic style during filming in Moscow in 2016. Although Zvyagintsev said he had no interest in politics, he incorporated a skeptical view of the police into the film. Themes include parental neglect, the state of lovelessness or nelyubov, and bleak environments.
Loveless opened to critical acclaim and won the Jury Prize at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Critics viewed it as a gripping story of a family crisis and a statement on life in Russia. It won two European Film Awards, including Best Cinematographer for Krichman, as well as the César Award for Best Foreign Film, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards.
Plot October 2012, Moscow. Children are leaving school. A twelve-year-old boy named Alyosha walks along a path through a wooded area on the outskirts of town. He throws a strip of tape onto a tree. His parents, Zhenya and Boris, are divorcing and are trying to sell their apartment. Both parents have new relationships: Boris with Masha, a young woman who is pregnant with his child; and Zhenya with Anton, an older and wealthier man with an adult daughter. Alyosha overhears a fight between his parents, neither of whom claim to want him and are considering placing him in an orphanage.
One day after spending most of the night with Anton, Zhenya realizes Alyosha has not been seen since the day before. The police believe Alyosha has run away and will return home within a day or two. When Alyosha does not return, a volunteer group specializing in the rescue of missing persons takes over the case and begins searching for the boy. The only relative Alyosha could have sought refuge with is Zhenya's estranged mother, who lives several hours away. Boris and Zhenya visit Zhenya's mother; their trip is punctuated by arguments, and they do not find any clues as to Alyosha's whereabouts. On the return journey home, Zhenya and Boris argue again; Zhenya says her marriage to Boris while pregnant was a mistake and she should have had an abortion; she also says she feels pity for Masha. Enraged, Boris stops the car and forces her out on a rural roadway.
The police again become involved with the search for Alyosha, which covers an increasingly wide area of the town and its surrounding area. After a fruitless search of an abandoned building that Alyosha's friend, Kuznetsov, identified as their hideout, Zhenya and Boris go to a morgue to view the remains of an unidentified child whose description matches Alyosha's. Both parents deny the disfigured child's body is their son's, though the experience proves traumatic and they break down in tears.
Some time passes; Boris and Zhenya's apartment has been sold, and workers dismantle wall hangings and appliances in Alyosha's old room. On the streets, missing-person posters of Alyosha are looking old and faded. In 2015, Boris now lives with Masha and their infant son, whom he treats coldly, while Zhenya has moved in with Anton. Three years after his disappearance, on the wooded path along which Alyosha used to walk home from school, the strip of tape he threw onto the tree remains as a surviving remnant of his existence.
Cast
The cast includes:
Themes and interpretations Critic Adam Nayman argued the theme of Loveless is "neglect" and that Alyosha represents "the lost innocence of a society deep in the throes of self-absorption". The Financial Timess Raphael Abraham stated that while Zhenya and Boris are humanized, they are "at best distracted, at worst criminally neglectful". Alyosha may be exemplary of "the unwanted or unacknowledged child" frequently seen in Zvyagintsev's filmography, according to reviewer Anthony Lane. Eric Hynes summarized Boris's and Zhenya's flaws as being "vacuity", "self-regard" and "selfhatred". Film Journal writer Simi Horwitz also said Zhenya is a narcissist "guiding prospective apartment buyers through it as if [Alyosha] were not there". The story is told with "intense domestic detail" compared to the work of Ingmar Bergman and August Strindberg.
In his review, Mark Kermode judged the police as "uncaring and ineffectual", saying this reflects a theme common throughout Zvyagintsev's work, but added the search-and-rescue team offered a contrast; "The volunteers are decent and driven, their stoical mission at odds with the dehumanising cycle of suburban life". Kermode added that Zhenya and Boris only become more resentful after Alyosha goes missing, escalating their "lovelessness", "the state ... in which (we are told) one simply cannot live". Hynes argued Boris and Zhenya do not develop as characters after Alyosha goes missing but are made aware of the "abyss" within themselves. Critic Leslie Felperin said the source of Zhenya's bitterness is revealed in her background when she visits her mother. Zhenya's mother may also live in a state of nelyubov ("lovelessness" in the English translation) according to critic Robert Koehler; the Russian word refers to a state of "anti-love" rather than the absence of love.
The settings and weather also feature in the themes, which according to Horwitz are "rooted in a peculiarly Russian landscape, existential and literal", exemplified by the "bleak, snowy day" that forms the backdrop of the prologue. The wintry forest featured in the prologue conveys the "eerie air of a gothic fairy tale" in Abraham's opinion; the use of the cinematography in the initial scenes may also give the camera "an independence of movement"; Hynes observed it "zooming into the split of a tree, panning skyward from the foot of it". Later in the story, snowfall threatens the search. Horwitz also found the interiors of the residences "oppressive and unwelcoming". Felperin viewed the abandoned building as symbolic, featuring broken glass and an empty pool that "starts to look like a mass grave, but one that could never hold all the runaways of the nation".
The Economist considered religious and political themes to be less important in Loveless than in Zvyagintsev's 2014 film Leviathan; while Boris' employer is devoutly Russian Orthodox, this is not a predominant theme and "the state is more absent than corrupt". Boris is "terrified" his employer will punish him for the divorce on religious grounds. Koehler equated the ineffectiveness of the police to the Russian state. Robbie Collin argued Loveless has "vast significance", noting that the story opens with Russians fearing the end of the world during the 2012 phenomenon and closes with Zhenya wearing an outfit displaying the word "Russia" prominently while running on a treadmill. Collin interpreted Zhenya as "a real 21st century Mother Russia, going nowhere yet locked unswervingly on course". Zvyagintsev said "Russia" outfits were popular during the 2014 Winter Olympics and was not meant to equate Zhenya with Mother Russia. Koehler instead viewed Zhenya's mother as representative of Mother Russia.
According to Peter Rainer, Loveless is "perhaps [Zvyagintsev's] most encompassing indictment of Russian society", considering the fears of the end of the world lead into the missing person case. Rainer wrote, "Alyosha, with his pugnacious, beseeching face, is not only a lost boy: In the movie's terms, he also represents the loss of something spiritually significant in modern Russia". Koehler interpreted the damaged family as the product of a declining large society. According to Wenlei Ma, "It’s hard not to see Loveless as standing in for Russia’s wider problem—of the promises of Perestroika and Glasnost and the progress reforms brought, progress that has since been diluted by divisions, apathy and a state with no soul". According to Koehler, the film negatively depicts modern Russia in a restaurant scene in which young men and women exchange telephone numbers and take group selfies.
Production Development
Producer Alexander Rodnyansky said Loveless was envisioned as a reflection of "Russian life, Russian society and Russian anguish", but was also intended to be relatable to other countries. Rodnyansky also said a desire to look at a family was a starting point in the story's conception, and that the director and screenwriter Andrey Zvyagintsev started writing the story while visiting the United States in 2015. Zvyagintsev said the film began as an attempt to remake Scenes from a Marriage, the 1973 miniseries by Ingmar Bergman. Zvyagintsev claimed to have met Bergman at Fårö in 2003, where they discussed a remake of the miniseries. An unsuccessful attempt to buy the rights to the miniseries led writers Oleg Negin and Zvyagintsev to redraw the plot, deciding to base it on news stories about the search and rescue team Liza Alert. Negin submitted the title Nelyubov to Zvyagintsev, which the director said is a Russian word referring to both a lack of love and a dire spiritual condition. Despite the flawed nature of the lead characters, Zvyagintsev said:
While Zvyagintsev claimed to be uninterested in politics, his story reflects his belief that "The modern-day police don't care about people". He later said Loveless was "over-politicized". He chose to start the story in October 2012, which he said was a point when the Russian people were optimistic about beneficial political reform, ending in disappointment in 2015. The film also includes references to the war in Donbas. While the conflict is referenced through Russian propaganda, Zvyagintsev said his films are anti-government and that the scenes were intended to show the lives of his characters:
Zvyagintsev's earlier film Leviathan, about corruption in Russia, received 35% of its budget from Russia's Ministry of Culture. However, Loveless was made without financial support from the national government because the Ministry of Culture disapproved of Leviathan when it was finished. The producers neither requested nor received any offers of state support for Loveless, Zvyagintsev said. Rodnyansky instead appealed for funding from wealthy Russian Gleb Fetisov and foreign companies, including Why Not Productions in France and Les Films du Fleuve in Belgium.
Casting
Zvyagintsev said it was natural to cast Aleksey Rozin as Boris because he and Rozin had previously worked together twice. The crew spent four months casting the character Zhenya, for which Maryana Spivak was an early candidate, and she was eventually cast in the role. Spivak said she took the opportunity for a starring role in a film and the chance to work with Zvyagintsev. Spivak questioned whether her character truly did not love her son; she interpreted the role with ambiguity, considering the complexity of Zhenya's emotions. Zvyagintsev's desire to cast unknown actors led to the casting of Sergey Badichkin as Boris' co-worker.
The filmmakers auditioned 250 children for the role of Alyosha and shortlisted around six. They asked the candidates to portray Alyosha weeping as his parents are arguing; Matvey Novikov was cast as Alyosha and the second-best candidate, Artyom Zhigulin, was given the role of Kuznetsov.
Filming