Loveless

"Loveless gives us a multicourse meal of social ills, too dispersed to feel like a thesis, yet too chilly to feel like a raw, unbridled tantrum."

"Takes an ominous, reverberating look not at the politics of Russia but at the crisis of empathy at the culture's core."

"A fiercely smart drama, its despairing mood sticks with you long after it ends."

"Zvyagintsev ... uses a toxic marriage to paint a larger portrait of decay, dereliction and moral detachment."

"It has a hypnotic intensity and unbearable ambiguity which is maintained until the very end."

"Novikov is on screen for only a few minutes and has little dialogue, but that's all this young actor needs to make a devastating impression."

"Zvyagintsev once again demonstrates his remarkable gift for creating perfectly formed dramatic microcosms that illustrate the bred-in-the-bone pathologies of Russian society."