The absence of love. The absence of a child. The absence of concern for anyone but oneself.
“Selfish” would have been an equally fitting title for Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Loveless,” which recounts the hapless search two careless parents make for their missing son against the backdrop of a Russia in political mayhem. As the radio and TV news blares on unheard, Zhenya and Boris – parents of 12-year-old Alyosha – can only think of how their impending divorce will affect their own lives, particularly concerning who gets custody of their son. 
Boris worries he will lose his job, as his Christian superiors prefer their employees be happily married. His already pregnant girlfriend seems an ideal candidate for a wife, but a second child would be too much to handle.
Zhenya wants nothing but to spend time with her new lover, an older, wealthier gentleman. In his arms, she can only recall the pain Alyosha caused her in childbirth and how desperately she yearned for an abortion.
But when Alyosha goes missing, Boris insists he must remain at work before beginning the search for his son; better to secure what career he has left. Zhenya, meanwhile, begrudgingly speaks with the police, who enlist the help of a search and rescue team.
The most useful clue they uncover is the utter heartlessness of Zhenya and Boris, who – once the latter returns from work – bicker endlessly throughout the preliminary questioning, each attempting to pin Alyosha’s disappearance on the other.
But the search continues on, whether the boy’s parents are particularly interested in finding him or not. Alyosha remains markedly absent for a film about a missing boy: after maybe fifteen minutes with him in the beginning, we cease to follow his story. Then again, he is missing after all.
Instead, the focus is on his parents, much in the way they would rather focus on themselves. His absence alone takes on the role of a character as we see more of how terribly his parents had treated him. With each cruel, offhand comment (such as how deeply Zhenya despised him) and each senseless action (as his father remains at work in lieu of searching for him) Alyosha’s story expands even as his presence onscreen diminishes.
The methodic rituals of the rescue team take over the narrative, a cold, distant search that lacks the parental concern the audience is begging for. It resonates as one considers the title; it is the kind of situation where one wishes to reach out and redirect the characters hopelessly misled.
Yet as political scandals and apocalyptic prophecies drone on in the background, Boris and Zhenya’s disinterest in their son translates into indifference towards the world. They are prone to changing the channel or walking away – anything to avoid reality. They immerse themselves in their phones or banal daily rituals, finding anything more appealing than facing the world in which their son is being kept from them.
Is it too painful for them to bear, or do they simply feel as though they have better things to do than worry?
One can’t help but see parallels between Alyosha’s parents and mother Russia, whose care for her children has lacked considerably over the course of modern history. As the conflict in the Ukraine rages on towards the end of the film, both Boris and Zhenya would rather wrap themselves in their own lives than face the plight of those in the outside world.
At the risk of sounding like a spoiler – and I swear it’s not – the film ends with an undeniably metaphorical image, and a deeply powerful one at that. As the Ukranian conflict floods the TV news, Zhenya steps outside. There on the porch, donning a track suit with “RUSSIA” emblazoned across the chest, she mounts a treadmill and begins to run. She moves, running away – but she gets nowhere.
“Loveless” is precisely what the title suggests: a film without love. It leaves you hollow, cold, and empty – as it is meant to. The cruelties experienced by the people of Russia are overlooked by their mother; they become the missing sons and daughters of the world, statistics instead of lives well-spent. Selfishness instead is the banner flown high, with faces buried in phones and voices that fail to cry out for the lost.