LOVELESS

Subtle storytelling it ain’t, but there’s an undeniable power to Zvyagintsev’s merciless deconstruction of modern Russia and its discontents, and his steadfast refusal to be anything less than ruthlessly unforgiving of both his characters and his country is indeed impressive. It’s as if he’s using an axe to make scalpel-sharp incisions and somehow getting away with it, to the point where an image of Zhenya on a treadmill, running towards nothing, while wearing the tracksuit of the Russian Olympic team, somehow doesn’t feel like the ridiculous, overly literal, patronising image that it surely could have been - Mother Russia’s got some issues, y’all.

In fact, it’s that image and one other that solidifies the film’s place as an impressive achievement of ice-cold political brutality, and both have reverberated in my head for months on end. Its partner comes earlier in the film, before Alyosha’s disappearance, and speaks to the prickly, ominously roaming camerawork that’s instrumental to the film’s success. In it, a particularly emotionally bloody, vicious argument between the couple in their handsome apartment is interrupted by a single surprise image that is maybe some of the simplest, most harrowing and devastating child acting I’ve ever been gut-punched by in a cinema before. Though it may be obviously constructed in hindsight, it’s an unshakeably bold and harrowing stroke – the first of many in this difficult, ferociously angry piece of filmmaking.