A winter of discontent in a montage of snow covered trees.
So opens LOVELESS, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s latest film to skew contemporary Russian society.
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Stark bark and branches outside are a tropical paradise in contrast to the hateful home and hearth of 12 year old Alyosha, where there is the Arctic blizzard of unbridled acrimony as his mother, Zhenya, and his father, Boris, are waging vicious divorce.

In this blight of a living room, vitriolic and vituperative expletives explode in a bitter barrage of articulate, amour-piercing artillery.

Taking shelter in the bunker of the apartment’s shithouse, Alyosha, eavesdrops and knows his life is truly in the toilet.

Audiences will not forget in a hurry the image of the little boy in silent scream while mother voids her bladder after venting her spleen.

The parents, already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son.

The, after this latest tirade of resentment, frustration and recriminations, Alyosha disappears…

LOVELESS is deep and devastating drama, an examination of the roots of dehumanisation and societal disarray at its roots – the family. It is chilling indeed when we cannot care less or love more our children.

Performances are splendid, particularly Maryana Spivak as Zhenya who married because she was pregnant in hope of a happy future and against the advice of her haranguing mother, a woman her husband calls Stalin in a skirt.

Zhenya’s new romance is with an older bloke, settled, assured, and supportive. So much in contrast to her life as wife and mother that she is utterly selfish in her luxuriation in it, a well of well being after a dessert of domestic aridity.

Alexey Rozin is Boris, a blockhead boy who has once again indiscriminately spread his seed and is expecting parenthood part two with his current girlfriend. This dick ruled head really ought to tie a knot in it.

Winner of the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes International Film Festival, LOVELESS is a layered, luminous production made with love – tough love – and the hope that through seeing it, by experiencing it, we can reacquaint ourselves with the better angels of our nature.