Gone Boy

A lost son drives an unhappy couple further apart in Loveless.

- David Edelstein

LOVELESS IS THE TITLE of Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s drama of a 12-year-old boy’s disappearance, and the word might as well be etched into the screen, hovering in chalk-colored skies over denuded trees on the outskirts of Moscow— home of a soon-to-be-divorced woman and man who really, really, really, really hate each other (“I’ve fucking had it with you”; “Scumbag”) and have no use for their son, either. Loveless is about a state of mind, a lament, an indictment of crimes against the human spirit.

This is clear before humans even make their first appearance. Zvyagintsev opens with a winterscape of dead trees. Shots two through nine offer variations thereof. Two ducks drift by in shots ten and 11. The next shot is a large building with an empty lot, over which a Russian flag flutters grimly. The faceless structure is a school that belches out children ahead of young Alyosha (Matvey Novikov), who trudges home alone to find his mother, Zhenya (Maryana Spivak), showing the family apartment to prospective buyers, a man and his pregnant wife. Mute with anger and grief, Alyosha refuses to make eye contact. Soon, we learn that the boy’s father, Boris (Aleksey Rozin), doesn’t want custody of him, and neither does Zhenya, who says, “I’m moving on, too.” To a woman doing her hair, she complains that her son is beginning to smell like her husband. She didn’t want the child, she tells her lover, Anton (Andris Keiss), a successful older man, adding, “I wasn’t even producing milk.”