Loveless

You have to admire Andrei Zvyagintsev's sheer creativity and personal courage. This Russian filmmaker is living under one of the world's most brutally oppressive regimes, a terrifying collusion of cynical religious leaders and thuggish politicians, and yet he still creates work that's openly skeptical about the purity of organized religion and the beneficence of government. More to the point, though, Zvyagintsev achieves haunting beauty while delving into the rot that plagues the core of human experience.

In "Loveless," a pair of absolutely revolting parents, Boris (Aleksey Rozin) and Zhenya (Maryana Spivak), bicker about which of them will be stuck with 12-year-old Alyosha (Matvey Novikov) once their divorce comes through. Neither one of them has much thought to spare for their son other than trying to sidestep the "problem" of having to care for him. Zhenya has a new boyfriend who is more athletic and more successful than Boris; the fact that he's somewhat older is both a point in his favor (he's already an empty nester) and a strike against him (he falls asleep early, so there's not much in the way of going out on the town).

Boris, for his part, not only has a new girlfriend, Masha (Marina Vasileva), but he's gotten her pregnant. What really worries him, though, is what his fundamentalist Christian boss might do if word gets out about his failed marriage. (Zhenya scoffs to her hairdresser that "Christian Sharia Law" prevails at Boris' place of employment, and a scene between Boris and a co-worker confirms that she's not wrong about this; the coworker explains how one of their colleagues saved his job after a divorce by showing up to an office party with a woman and two girls who posed as his wife and daughters.)

After hearing a late-night row between his parents in which the kindest thing they have to say about him is that he'll get used to boarding school, Alyosha runs away from home. His clueless parents, distracted as they are, don't even notice for a day or so; they're too busy staying over with their respective lovers. When Zhenya gets a call from Alyosha's school that he hasn't been there for two days, she finds Boris to be of little help and the cops are not much better. She and Boris then turn to a cadre of volunteers who make tracking runaways a specialty.

The film is grim, but also mesmerizing. Zvyagintsev's camera probes cheerless architecture and lonesome riverside settings; snow falls intermittently over the unfolding drama. From time to time there are strange and telling touches: As the camera glides through a nice restaurant, a beautiful woman smiles our way and a voice asks for her number, which she unhesitatingly provides before rejoining her date at their table. We never see the man who complimented her; the camera simply continues its journey before locating Zhenya and her lover at their own table, and the film carries on from there. Is this a meta moment? Is it a breaking of the fourth wall in a quick moment of almost zany humor?

We need those moments, because there's no hint here that Boris or Zhenya are going to reconcile or become better people. Husband and wife remain estranged and distracted by their phones. (This film is set in 2012, but there's a bit of schadenfreude in seeing that social media is as corrosive to Russian domestic life as to our own. Perhaps this is how they knew to use it against us in 2016.) Zhenya laments not having gotten an abortion even as she and Boris make a long round trip to Zhenya's mother's house, just in case Alyosha has fled to her. (Small chance of that: She's a mean and abusive woman, as full of bile as her daughter.) Later on, at a coroner's where they have been summoned to look at the mangled body of a dead boy who might or might not be Alyosha, Zhenya flies into an even more intense rage, directing her well-used stream of insults at Boris along with a flurry of scratching nails and pummeling fists.

Are these people capable of love, affection, or even concern? To an extent, yes - but Zvyagintsev leaves it an open question as to just what it is they are concerned about. Appearances, maybe. Perhaps even, here and there, the son they refuse to prioritize. But the sort of love a parent usually gives to a child? That's another matter entirely, and it may well be beyond their grasp.

This Blu-ray edition includes a "making of" that's not a documentary as much as a collection of behind-the-scenes footage, much of it showing the director's mounting frustration as he works with his cast and crew (and a plastic bag that won't fly into the frame the right way). It's a puzzling, but unpolished and weirdly riveting, glimpse into the nuts and bolts of film production.

"Loveless"
Blu-ray
$30.99
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/loveless/