Loveless
| Release Date: December 1, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonMar 8, 2018
These days, every other film seems to be an audition to make a Marvel movie — but not Loveless. This is cinema of the first order. Read full review
100
ConsequenceBlake GobleFeb 28, 2018
It’s a harrowing moral fable, a political fable, and above all, a deft lament. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangNov 30, 2017
Toward the end of this searing, finally overwhelming film, it’s unclear which is the more disturbing realization: that Alyosha was lost long before he went missing, or that you don’t really want him to be found. Read full review
100
Village VoiceBilge EbiriNov 29, 2017
Two representative moments define Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Loveless — and they are among the most devastating, harrowing things I’ve ever seen on a screen. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 27, 2017
The script, co-written by Zvyagintsev and his regular collaborator Oleg Negin, scrupulously extends to each of its characters the dignity of complexity, and both excellent leads repay the favour tenfold, investing what could have easily been petit-bourgeois caricatures – the preening shrew, the oafish office drone – with riveting sincerity and nuance. Read full review
100
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 27, 2017
Zvyagintsev is masterfully compiling a cinematic record of suffering, and the indifference surrounding and facilitating it, which will live on. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 27, 2017
Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Loveless is a stark, mysterious and terrifying story of spiritual catastrophe: a drama with the ostensible form of a procedural crime thriller. It has a hypnotic intensity and unbearable ambiguity which is maintained until the very end. Read full review
100
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 27, 2017
This is the downer as an art form, a feelbad film of gargantuan reach and effect, and a brave, horrified commentary on a whole nation. Read full review
90
TheWrapRobert AbeleFeb 15, 2018
Marriages have been used before as prisms of a wider critique. But Loveless has a careful alchemy of psychological acuity and societal insight that imbues nearly every shot (a close-up of a face, an epic vista, a tension-filled pan) with a gathering insight into the ripple effects of turning private miseries into petty wars. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony LaneFeb 5, 2018
Why is it, then, that Loveless, which has been nominated for Best Foreign Film at this year’s Academy Awards, should be so much more gripping than grim? One reason is that, for all the deadened souls who throng the tale, the telling could not be more alive. Read full review
90
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisNov 30, 2017
With its fastidious framing and angry-tough temperament, Loveless...earns its air of careful foreboding. Read full review
90
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 27, 2017
The dramatic aesthetic of a movie like Loveless — rock-solid yet leisurely in its observance, grounded yet metaphorical — makes it a quietly commanding film. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinMay 27, 2017
With his devastating, finely layered new drama Loveless (Nelyubov), Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev once again demonstrates his remarkable gift for creating perfectly formed dramatic microcosms that illustrate the bred-in-the-bone pathologies of Russian society. Read full review
90
Paste MagazineTim GriersonMay 27, 2017
When the film concludes, you may find yourself wanting to watch it again to fully absorb the journey Zvyagintsev took you on. And because Loveless is so accomplished, the repeat viewing promises to be deeply rewarding. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrMar 7, 2018
Seems on the face of it to be one of Zvyagintsev’s simplest and saddest stories, but it widens in the mind like ripples spreading out from a body dumped in a lake. Read full review
88
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanFeb 22, 2018
Stagnation, collapse, heartlessness — whether on an individual level or a national one — are the true subjects of Zvyagintsev’s film. Its message isn’t subtle, but it is delivered with deadly, haunting finality. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineChuck BowenFeb 14, 2018
One feels in the film's punishing bleakness a yearning for transcendence. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comGodfrey CheshireDec 1, 2017
One thing that’s fascinating in the story’s second half is the amount of expertise and effort that’s expended on searching for Alyosha. Read full review
80
UproxxKeith PhippsFeb 15, 2018
The filmmaking is so strong and the scope so large it helps obscure the fairly simple moral at the heart of the script by Zvyagintesev and Oleg Negin. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinFeb 14, 2018
Loveless is about a state of mind, a lament, an indictment of crimes against the human spirit. Read full review
80
Total FilmJordan FarleyFeb 6, 2018
This chilly thriller is another highly accomplished feature to add to a formidable body of work. Read full review
80
EmpireAndrew LowryFeb 5, 2018
Come for the near-endless rows that convincingly carry the venom of a collapsed, resentful marriage; stay for the extended critique of Russia’s contemporary spiritual vacancy. Read full review
80
Screen DailyDan FainaruMay 27, 2017
Faithful to his title, Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan) deivers a cruel, desolate, unforgiving image of Russia’s new middle class, ruled by selfishness, greed, frustration, envy, anger and anxiety in Loveless. Read full review
75
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonMar 1, 2018
It’s a tough two hours, but director Zvyagintsev invites engagement by giving us more than a chronicle of dysfunction — he’s searching for its source. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoFeb 22, 2018
This is a film that’s likely to stick with you because of its exceptional intensity. You may find yourself wondering, long after the credits roll, what on Earth is in store for Boris’ unborn child? Read full review
75
The Associated PressLindsey BahrFeb 15, 2018
Loveless is a beautifully shot and elegantly constructed film about an already broken family in a moment of crisis and tragedy. It’s also one that is so bleak and unpleasant to sit through, and sit with afterward, that I could honestly only recommend Loveless with extreme caution, if at all. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloNov 29, 2017
"Leviathan" (2014) pushed pitiless corruption into something like black comedy; Loveless is anything but funny, but does at least acknowledge fleeting moments of joy and understanding, even as it insists that they’re not nearly enough. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnMay 27, 2017
While not the same league as “Leviathan,” Zyvagintsev’s latest slow-burn look at anguished people tortured by problems beyond their control displays his mastery of the form. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaMay 27, 2017
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. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovMar 28, 2018
All three leads give subtly wrenching performances that wouldn’t have been out of place in Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorFeb 22, 2018
Yet for all that the director's unflinching vision, the cast's excellent performances and Mikhail Krichman's unerring cinematography impress themselves upon the viewer, there is something out of balance in Loveless. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottApr 19, 2018
Granted, it takes a while to get to that point. Nearly an hour, in fact. That's owed to Zvyagintsev's penchant for long, lingering shots, which emphasizes mood over kinetic energy, and which also at times creates a drag on the narrative. That mood, however -- tragic, hopeless, heartbreaking -- is expertly created. Read full review
58
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaMay 27, 2017
Although Leviathan, Zvyagintsev’s previous and far-superior effort, was hardly a masterclass in nuance, a palpable sense of empathy and flashes of humor largely compensated for its lack of subtlety. These are sorely lacking in Loveless. Read full review
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