"Loveless" - an excellent psychological thriller, in which the tension increases with each shot. Characters are simple and understandable, and the emotional response is huge. Acting game (especially Matvei Novikov) is beautiful. Andrey Zvyagintsev made a very tough film that literally squeezes you out like a sponge in the first 20 minutes (not least because of the acting). But what is especially cool is how "Loveless" beautifully shot. Amazing work with light, perfect and perfectionist staging of each frame and amazing cold Scandinavian color correction. Of the minuses, it's a bit of an under-twisted ending and climax to my taste. As a result, "Loveless" is a great movie and one of the best for 2017.

It's a pity, when movies like that, they could be better and they stay in less. The movie is fine. The best, for me of the nominees in its category. But that beginning of several minutes without telling anything, landscapes and landscapes and not having taken more advantage of the child and a few moments, stops the film, make that being a movie that is good, do not get where you should have arrived.I've heard it many times and I'm sure that all that much also, that plane of the crying child is great. But it is also very well rolled. Not only has the child been crying, but also putting the mother in a part of the house to use to choreograph the child, following her with the camera. It is that it is very well thought out and realized. And seeing the boy with that face is brutal.It has a great picture. It can not be more frigid. Like the movie itself. It makes you cold. Sometimes it's too dark but great. It gets you not only in history, but also in that environment and civilization.The actors are great almost always. There is a moment that has disappointed me. When we see the father crying sitting and can not see his face, that scene, the actors fall, I do not know if the actor did not know how to do it or if the director has not been able to shoot it, but see an actor that is leaving the soul and record him without seeing him, it is a pity.There is too much sex in the movie. He does not paint anything and the sex scenes extend a lot. The director does not finish convincing me. I could have made a much better movie. He does not know how to always keep the rhythm of the movie. The movie is something distant. He does not know how to position the camera.Anyway, it's a movie to watch it

My wife and I frequently find ourselves wondering why so many people we know decided to even have children in the first place, so little priority do they give them in their lives. They act like children are a roadblock to all of these exciting things they would otherwise be doing, instead of recognizing them as exciting things in their own right and probably more likely to enrich their lives in ways that matter than any of the other endeavors these people seem so fixated on. But they don't recognize this, and as a result the kids suffer for it."Loveless" is a bleak and scathing indictment of this kind of modern-day parenting, a world of selfish adults pursuing their petty little enjoyments while ignoring the children they voluntarily brought into the world. It's a tough film to watch, though not as tough as I thought it would be. The little boy at the center of the story isn't in the film very long before he goes missing, so we're spared scenes of the misery he feels at home with a super bitch of a mom and a checked out dad. The couple of scenes we get are enough. Then, the film turns into a "L'Aventurra" like odyssey as the parents and authorities go looking for him. What makes the film tough to watch more than anything are the horrid characters that populate it. These people may have once been happy, and maybe have the potential to be happy again, but if so we see no signs of it. These are wretched souls who take their misery out on each other, and walking out of the movie theater after this film was over was like walking into the fresh air after being trapped in a dank crawl space. The film is claustrophobic in its nihilism.But, and this is a big "but," despite the above paragraph that makes this film sound like a chore to sit through, it's actually a wonderful movie and fascinating in a morbid kind of way. It's bleak to be sure, but people who are exhilarated by good film making can leave even a bleak movie on a high if it's done well, and this is one of those films.Nominated for a 2017 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film from Russia.Grade: A

Apparently Chekhov believed he was wriitng comedy whilst to the rest of the world his plays were steeped in melancholia; whenever I watch a Chekhov play in a theatre no matter how excellent the translation I always feel slightly short-changed because I may be sitting, by chance, next to a native Russian speaker who has access to a good ten per cent more meaning than I via missed nuances that remain untranslateable. I feel the same way about Loveless although I enjoyed it immensely - if enjoyment is appropriate for such a barrel of sighs. It is, of course, very Chekhovian but Chekhov Unchained as it were. Chekhov with the gloves off, way beyond mere misunderstand where Chekhov thought he was writing The CHEERY Orchard but we saw The Cherry Orchard. Loveless could be subtitled Bleak Bread And Cucumber such is the level of negativity. It poses more questions than it answers; could two people who hate each other so much EVER have loved enough to marry or were there other powerful reasons for the marriage? They have, after all, both forged other relationships and both seem happy. How did two people so totally devoid of maternal/paternal feeling wind up with a child? Surely in this day and age an accidental/unwanted pregnancy could have been aborted easily enough. This is a film that demands several viewings and I for one intend to watch it again. Performances across the board are outstanding and it would be churlish to single out just one or two. Should it pick up the Best Foreign Film Oscar it would be well deserved.