Zvyagintsev shows us this with great formal clarity, a kind of mortified calm. In those woods, the trees are fallen, leafless and decaying. Loveless sets a high bar for the 70th Cannes Film Festival
Zvyagintsev layers on his themes of the inhumanity of man and the bleak effects of our self-obsessed culture, yet with the lightness of falling snow. A proper, serious drama for grown-ups
visually and acoustically stunning, what is horribly, tragically striking is how innocence is stripped away in a loveless marriage, and in a loveless state
the bitter taste left by this realization has no parallel in the work of Bergman or Antonioni, neither of whom peddled such haughty, facile, and ultimately futile didacticism
once again, Zyvagintsev does an effective job at diagnosing a dysfunctional family, and this masterful study of desperation doesn't need to say anything new in order to make the tragedy count for something
Loveless may not have the obvious grandeur and reach of his previous film, Leviathan, and is closer to the mordant domestic drama of Elena. But its brilliance and passion are compelling
it's superbly performed, beautifully photographed, and every frame has clearly been considered thoroughly... Loveless is a good film, but one that's hard one to recommend
"Loveless", perhaps his [Zvyagintsev] most brilliant, but also most profoundly pessimistic film to date that, couched in such viscerally intelligent, skillful filmmaking, may also be his most persuasive