Yesterday the 17th edition of the PAC-festival took place at one of the biggest cinema chains in the Netherlands. It’s an event I always enjoy visiting as the atmosphere is fun (usually running into some other movie bloggers), movies are shown which won’t be released for a couple of months and usually there are at least two or three titles which are awesome. This time the festival opened with the Russian movie Loveless.
A family is about to fall apart. The husband was seeing someone else who is now pregnant and because of that his wife is in a new relationship as well. Their house is for sale, but despite all of that they haven’t told anything yet to their 12-year-old son. The consequences of that decision are big though when he suddenly disappears without a trace.
Loveless is a very slow film, where you initially have difficulties to find something to latch onto. When you see the effect the news of the divorce has on the son (when he overhears them) who breaks down in the most devastating way you might think the movie will focus on him. Instead it shifts to the parents and their new lives, with them worrying about keeping their job, their social life online (the mother takes pictures of everything, even the waiter at the restaurant). Eventually the film shifts to the search for the boy. Visually the movie looks good as it shows the bleak city life and the Russian landscape. That bleakness is present in the story as well, which is very well acted, but with which I had a hard time really caring for, making this a long movie to sit through. Afterwards I had the feeling the film could have offered more. Although there were enough people who loved this, I thought it was a disappointing start of the festival.
I do want to see this since it’s from the man who did Leviathan a few years ago as he’s been kind of outspoken about society in Russia.
I haven’t seen Leviathan, but after watching this I’m not sure it would be a movie I’d want to see…