Andrey Zyvagintsev, Loveless, 2017
Never was a film so aptly titled. Christ, this is bleak. Excellent film, but it'll probably have you reaching for a bottle of something dangerous - I was sorry the morning after. Basically, it's a nasty divorce where neither parent, both of whom are selfish beyond belief and already involved with other partners, wants custody of their 12-year-old son, who, we learn, was never wanted in the first place. Worst thing is the poor lad overhears their vicious exchanges - rarely have I been so shaken by film of a child crying - and runs away. And is never seen again (by us - though his parents have to identify his body in a dreary morgue later). On another level, it's the story of Putin's Russia - the fact that the mother Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) is wearing a Russia sweatshirt as she runs mindlessly on yuppie boyfriend's designer treadmill at the end of the film is, I think, significant. Nobody loves anybody - except themselves. The sex scenes - Zhenya and her guy, who sounds like he's seriously out of shape despite his home gym gear, and Boris with his heavily pregnant girlfriend Masha - are Dumont-like in their animality. The police are woefully ineffectual, if not entirely unsympathetic (they're just short of manpower and resources), and the search for the missing boy is organised by what seems to be a group of (unpaid?) volunteers, perhaps the only positive thing in the film. The ghost of Tarkovsky lurks in the shadows: the opening shots of snow-covered trees and a black lake in a city park is a kind of anti-Solaris - remember the gorgeous summer and the beautiful country house - and the fruitless search in the abandoned building where young Alyosha used to play with his (one and only?) friend is like the Zone in Stalker. But there are no magic moments here, even if rain is dripping through the dilapidated ceiling (another nod to Solaris, perhaps?). The place looks like it used to be a snazzy Soviet cultural centre fifty years ago. Now it's a wreck. What we have instead is today's faceless corporate open space HQ, with Boris and his colleague pigging out on decidedly unappetising fare in the canteen, if they can put their wretched mobile phones down long enough to fork the shroudmeat in. The timeline of the film is also astute: the story begins just before the end of the world - remember December 21st 2012? well, those Mayans got it wrong - and ends with scenes of Putin's dirty war in Ukraine. Not that any of our protagonists really pay any attention to the horrors on their shiny flat screens. Masha has now had her baby, and Boris throws the little boy into his playpen and lets him scream. History repeats itself. The horror, the horror..
) and nobody's going to win a Best Actor nomination, but that's part of its charm. Cohen's script is sharp and the filming economical and tight. I'd sooner watch a decent B than a crappy A. I liked it better than this guy, in any case 
