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MOVIE REVIEW: Loveless

Garth Cremona (RIP)

The Oscar Nominated film, Best Foreign Language nomination this year, comes from Russia and as you’d expect offers a bleak look at a relationship breakdown.  Boris and Zhenya are going through a divorce, the sight of each other is making them sick, and they can’t wait to continue on their lives with the other people they have found.  The only thing that is keeping them from walking away is trying to sell their apartment and a mild irritation for them in the shape of their son.  When the boy goes missing the two cannot put their differences to one side to get him home safe, rather it points out to both of them how they wish he had been aborted before birth, but yet they work with the authorities to find him.

The striking thing about this film is that you are left with no doubt that some people shouldn’t have children.  Both Boris and Zhenya are probably the worst characters that you’re going to see all year, they are totally self obsessed and you don’t question why they are getting divorced.  You don’t want them together, you wish there was an ocean between these two, and you start to agree with them that they should have nothing to do with children.

But Boris needs to keep a family in order to keep his job, which is controlled by a Christian organisation, so a family is imperative.  Thankfully for Boris he has another young girl pregnant and is waiting for the divorce to get remarried as quickly as possible so he won’t lose the valuable career.  For Zhenya the divorce means that she can move in with her older lover, who doesn’t want children running around his nice apartment, and whose older daughter is too busy to be part of his life.  Their plans for their future do not have anything to do with the boy, who after hearing a fight where they talk about sending him to boarding school, then to the army, runs away.  Did he run away or was he taken?

The performers that play Boris and Zhenya should have been given nominations for their roles here.  You hate them instantly, there is seriously nothing that makes them remotely human or likeable.  They have a chemistry together that is unlike anything I’ve seen before, the second they stand face to face, the very second, the hatred between the characters is just awesome in a terrible way.  When the boy goes missing the procedural aspect of the film takes over with the drama breaking the investigation technical points.

Russian Dramas are very often very heavy-handed in their delivery, you come to expect that, and as a film goer you are often left feeling that you want them to end as soon as possible.  No matter how good they are you still want them to end quickly.  The film makers and creatives seem to be able to inject the heaviness with ease.  Loveless is hugely heavy considering the subject of the lost child and the divorce, but it’s the performances of the two leads that make this almost like a horror film.  Honestly the kid would have been better off with Fred and Rosemary West than with these two.  I walked out of the cinema and I honestly didn’t know how I felt about the film, I knew that awards were deserved by the creatives involved and the performers, but I didn’t know if I could go see it again.  I would recommend this to anyone who likes bleak dramas, there are some out there that this is like a bacon sandwich is to me, but if you want something light then please stay away.  This is the only one of the Foreign Language nominees that I’ve seen so I’m wishing it luck.  The ending of the film is realistic to the statistics of the missing children, and as for the parents they seem to have found a fresh hell, and well deserved too.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Writers: Oleg Negin, Andrey Zvyagintsev
Stars: Maryana Spivak, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Aleksey Rozin & more…. See full cast & crew

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Garth Cremona (RIP)
Comic book creator and movie reviewer. You can find out more at www.dublinwriter.com
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