The bitter ending of a marriage and a search for a missing child prove fertile ground for scathing social commentary in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s haunting Loveless. No stranger to criticizing Russian society, it is a wonder that Zvyagintsev has been able to produce the films he makes on home soil. A cursory look at the opening credits shows a lot of financing coming from France and Germany. This international funding approach also shows in Zvyagintsev’s tone. Tarkovsky, Bergman and Haneke all show up in Zvyagintsev’s work.

The film opens on Alyosha, a shy and quiet 12-year-old boy as he walks home through a Russian winter. Back at home, he is treated with indifference by his mother, Zhenya. She talks to him like an adult that she doesn’t particularly like. Distant and cold. Her husband, Boris, arrives home from work and within minutes the parents are fighting. A particularly brutal war of words unfolds and the adults speak freely about their relationship and their child, thinking their son has gone to sleep. The moment we finally see that he has been listening is devastating in its quiet horror, as we watch the very talented child actor’s face contort under a stream of tears. A truly painful moment.

The couple are well into the end of their marriage. Both involved in extramarital affairs, Zhenya with an older, well-off man and Boris with a younger, very pregnant woman. They are both looking for ways out of their marriage, but are fighting against external factors: particularly Boris’ job. Boris’ boss is an extremely conservative Christian. Boris hears from a co-worker of another employee hiring a woman to pretend to be his wife at a Christmas party for fear of being fired if exposed as a divorcee.

This isn’t a spoiler, as it’s part of any synopsis released of Loveless, but halfway into the film Alyosha goes missing. It is unclear where he’s gone or why he left. We spend the rest of the film following the couple as they exhaust all available means to try and find their son. A filmmaker with less to say would use this situation as an opportunity to bring the warring couple back together. Zvyagintsev chooses to present an absolutely irreparable rift and allows the characters to be unlikable and self centered, perhaps never learning any lessons from the experience.

This film is no different from the director’s previous in terms of the outrage directed towards the Russian ruling and middle class. Orthodoxy casts a shadow over the marital struggles. Constricting bureaucracy gets in the way of finding Alyosha. Zhenya seems to live two lives, as she speaks in horrible ways about her son to a co-worker, pausing for a moment to snap one of many selfies, but is suddenly thrust into the role of the worried mother without necessarily knowing why or how to emulate.

This is not a film about closure. The child missing is not so much a plot point as it is a mirror for the unlikable and self-absorbed parents. Zvyagintsev offers no answers or catharsis, but rather a black, tangled mess not unlike the images of bare branched birch trees that fill the frames of Loveless. Zvyagintsev has employed the image of tree branch silhouettes before. Like the image, there are echoes from Zvyagintsev’s previous films. Leviathan’s disdain for Christianity and stifling beurocracy, Elena’s stark depiction of love and marriage and The Return’s story about estranged family all appear in Loveless. 

Bleak, angry and quietly enthralling, Loveless  is another in a string of assured and confident films from the Russian master. Five features in and no sign of slowing down, the future is bright for Andrey Zvyagintsev, even if his films might lead you to feel differently. We have a master craftsman working at the top of his game in difficult circumstances. A reason for celebration, indeed.