Loveless

Austere and magnificent film.

Aside from Alyosha, there's no one to root for here, and Zvyagintsev paints the bleakest of picture. But his filmmaking has a driving force that hurtles you along, and like his 2014 masterpiece "Leviathan," this micro-focused drama allows the director to turn the story of one family into an X-ray of a nation's bruised soul.

Zvyagintsev would have done better, I think, to include more of the beauty that has gone out of this world, if only to heighten its loss.

Come for the near-endless rows that convincingly carry the venom of a collapsed, resentful marriage; stay for the extended critique of Russia’s contemporary spiritual vacancy.

Loveless proceeds like a messy younger sibling of Noah Baumbach's "Greenberg" as it tracks Andrew's ongoing denial of the mounting pressures to settle down, many of which come from his reasonably sane ex, Joanna (Cindy Chastain).

An aimless film about an aimless fellow, but it's not without its charms. It may be without a point, but hey, you can't have everything in a no-budget film like this.

Despite inventive moments between the performers, the central character, true to his type, is too casually drawn to sustain our interest in whether he loves or loses.