Cranleigh Film Club is showing Loveless (15) on Thursday 27 February 2020 starting at 7.30pm; doors open at 7.00pm. As usual our film will be shown in the Band Room, GU6 8AF, and there is ample parking in the adjacent Village Way car park.
Refreshments are available.
Loveless (15)
Born in Siberia, Andrey Zvyagintsev started as a stage actor and then went to Moscow to be a film star. It didn’t work, but around 1993 he was offered a TV-commercial directing job and, as they say, never looked back. International success followed. With only four feature films before this one, though numerous shorts, he has become one of the most respected of directors.
His latest film has been called compelling, forbidding, haunting, mysterious, terrifying. An estranged couple going through a brutal divorce each have new partners and want to start again, until they have to team up when their 12-year-old son, Alyosha, disappears after witnessing one of their fights. Referred to as ‘the kid,’ unheard, unloved, an obstacle, the unhappy boy feels he is a burden. Like machines, the warring couple continue their repetitive spiral of mutual recrimination as Alyosha crouches behind a door. What his parents don’t know is that he can hear every word. Fearful and alone, he absorbs every last ounce of malice, his face becoming contorted into a mass of silent tears that well up from deep within his being. Boris and Zhenya finally realise that Alyosha has been missing for nearly two days. Evgeny Galperin’s piano score is dramatic, rich, cascading.
Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian: “mysterious and terrifying, its brilliance and passion are compelling.” Peter Travers said in Rolling Stone, “Zvyagintsev’s filmmaking has driving force, and like his 2014 masterpiece Leviathan this focussed drama allows the director to turn the story of one family into an X-ray of a nation’s bruised soul. It means to shake you. It does.”
A private reviewer said, “this beautiful, painful film is a must-see; the best movie I’ve seen this year: flawless, riveting, never straying into melodrama. Truly outstanding.” Another: “Zvyagintsev is one of the best directors nowadays and I regard Loveless as his greatest film so far. It’s a complex portrait of a society in decay populated by selfish, empty people. Besides the perfect screenplay, Loveless carries a powerful direction and hauntingly beautiful cinematography. Editing, music and acting are all top class. Loveless is an unforgettable experience. It will make you think and think for good. 10/10.” Another noted, “bleak to be sure, but people who are exhilarated by good film making can leave even a bleak movie on a high if it’s done well. This is one of those films.”
“So much more gripping than grim. For all the tale’s deadened souls, the telling could not be more alive,”
New Yorker.
Come and join us!
Membership costs £30 per year, covering all 12 films. To join please email your details to the Membership Secretary, Sara Lock, at . We make a £5 charge for guests at each film. Do come along and enjoy the atmosphere!
