Loveless

A Russian film. A couple are divorcing. The flat is up for sale, both have someone new, and both have already started the next life. They have a son. Neither of them wants him; there is an argument about who will be forced to take him, and the boy hears it from behind a door. The next day he does not come home. From there the film becomes a search. The police do little and say most children come back. A volunteer organisation takes over: they print notices, walk the woods in lines, search an abandoned building and drag a river. The parents go with them. They are not united by it; they argue in the car and go back to their new lives in the evening. What the narrative is interested in is not a missing child but the absence the title names: the film says these people had nothing to give before the boy disappeared, and it says the same of the country around them. The searching itself is the strongest part. The volunteers are methodical, unemotional and efficient, and the film films them like professionals rather than heroes. The abandoned building is used at length; concrete, broken glass, snow and nobody. There is a radio and television in the background throughout, and news of the fighting in Ukraine comes in that way. Maryana Spivak and Aleksey Rozin play the parents. Andrey Zvyagintsev directed. The film won the Jury Prize at Cannes and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Who it is for: anyone who wants cold, exacting European drama. Who it is not for: anyone who needs resolution; the film offers no comfort and does not intend to.