The EconomistFebruary 10th 2018 Books and arts 752 cess of writing in French, the language of
the former colonial power, still awakens
complex feelings. They aim to assert an in-
dependent claim to write in French. “Liter-
ature written in French does not need to
call itself French literature in order to ex-
ist,” commented Véronique Tadjo, a Fran-
co-Ivorian writer.
Ms Slimani is mindful of the controver-
sy. She criticises publishers in Paris for not
investing enough in French-language writ-
ing outside France. “Francophone litera-
ture is a world literature, but publishing is
very Parisian,” she says. “We need to de-
centralise, to stop always going through
Paris.” A dual citizen who grew up in Mo-
rocco, then moved to France to study, she
feels at ease in both cultures. She wants to
correct the vision of “France at the centre
and, around it, in a sort of periphery, what
one would call ‘the Francophone world’.”
The point, she says, is to “encourage move-
ment, sharing and to value diversity”.
Ms Slimani’s own writing—“Chanson
Douce”, published in Britain as “Lullaby”
and in America as “The Perfect Nanny”,
won the Prix Goncourt in 2016—may help
to break down such perceptions. So might
the emergence of other new, and often fe-
male, voices. For the moment, the best in-
tentions of a well-meaning French presi-
dent are colliding with the radical critique
of writers in French who seek neither the
consent nor the approbation of France. 7I
N THE opening frames of “Loveless”, An-
drei Zvyagintsev’s new film, the camera
looks up at a denuded tree against a wintry
sky. After this barren view come shots of a
lifeless, snow-bound park. Yet when the
action begins it is autumn, not winter; not
on the outside, atleast.
The freeze seems symbolic. In fact, says
Mr Zvyagintsev, it was an accident. “Winter
played a tragic role in our film,” he says
impishly—because the snow fell earlier
than expected, disrupting the production
schedule. As for the chilling opening shots,
he took them on a whim, without know-
ing what to do with them. Still, he ac-
knowledges, offering up interpretations
even as he disavowsthem, others might in-
fer that “political winter has dawned” or
that the snows“cover overthe traces” of
wrongdoing. “We don’tjust watch the
films,” he says; “the films watch us.”
“Loveless” has been nominated for an
Academy Award for best foreign-language
film, as was “Leviathan”, Mr Zvyagintsev’s
previous feature. Adapting the Book of Job
to the Russian Arctic, “Leviathan” told the
story of an ordinary man clinging to his
home, in the face of a land-grab by corrupt
local officials and the Orthodox church; re-
sistance only worsens his plight. The
church features in “Loveless”, too. Boris,
one of the main characters, has a boss who
is an Orthodox fundamentalist. Here,
though, religion is a marginal theme. The
state is more absent than corrupt. All the
same, “Loveless” is as much an exposé as
its predecessor.
Boris and hissoon-to-be ex-wife, Zhe-
nya, hate each other. They are selling their
flat on the outskirts of Moscow, but cannotagree on how to dispose of their other joint
asset: their 12-year-old son Alyosha, of
whom neither wants custody. Alyosha
overhears their bickering and runs away. It
is a while before they notice. The searing
sequence recalls “The Return”, Mr Zvya-
gintsev’s first film, in which children ca-
lamitously eavesdrop on the adult world.
In “Loveless” the police do next to noth-
ing. Instead a search is launched by a group
of volunteers. They are based on a real-life
organisation, one of many that try to com-
pensate for the Russian state’scallousness;
Mr Zvyagintsev says the leader of the chari-
ty told him that the film’s main police offi-cer seems a good man (he has the decency
to admit that the coppers won’t help). The
volunteers fan out across a beautiful, ap-
palling landscape that evokes the work of
Andrei Tarkovsky, one of Mr Zvyagintsev’s
influences. But this is not a whodunnit.
Alyosha is notthe real quarry, nor are his
parents the only culprits. A scene at the end
hints at a widerscale. Wearing a Russian
Olympic sweatshirt, Zhenya runs on a
treadmill outside her new lover’s apart-
ment, while inside he watches a report on
the war in the Donbas.To be or to show?
To viewers in the West, it might seem odd
that the Russian authorities tolerate such
an ultra-bleak view of their country. On the
face of it Mr Zvyagintsev’s oeuvre is more
subversive than “The Death of Stalin”, a
British-made historical satire whose distri-
bution licence was recently revoked. “Full-
throttle censorship”, Mr Zvyagintsev com-
ments, adding fatalistically that speaking
out about politics “is not going to make a
difference”. Despite receiving state fund-
ing, “Leviathan” was indeed denounced
by posturing officials, especially for its por-
trayal of the church. But, saysAlexander
Rodnyansky, Mr Zvyagintsev’s producer,
the only censorship imposed on his films
has been the bleeping of swear words.
In Russia, though, his critiques are in
some ways less risky than they seem in the
West. The dysfunction he depicts is too
commonplace to deny—and nobody does,
not even Vladimir Putin, though he vows
to deal with it. Direct censorship of the arts
is rare; in any case Mr Zvyagintsev’s films
are not popular enough to be threatening.
Russian audiences, says MrRodnyansky,
“don’t want you to tell them the truth”. He
compares the director to a doctor bearing
unwanted bad news.
In “Loveless” his diagnosis goes beyond
Russia. Mr Zvyagintsev’s films each have
dominant visual motifs. “Leviathan” has a
skeleton of a beached whale. In “Elena”—
which asks how far a grandmother will go
to raise the cash needed to bribe her grand-
son out of military conscription—mirrors
are the main image, suggesting a society in
which the only real moral constraint is con-
science. In “Loveless” the motif is mobile
phones. People are constantly checking
them, or taking selfies to post online. “To
show your life, or to live your life?” Mr
Zvyagintsev summarises. “That’s really the
huge question.” Mobile phones, he thinks,
have “revealed” human nature rather than
changing it.
What emerges in “Loveless” is an emo-
tional void, an atomised desolation not
tritely attributable to Mr Putin or the Soviet
legacy. The search for Alyosha leads to a
crumbling Soviet sanatorium, the sort of
Ozymandian ruin thatlittersthe Russian
countryside, monuments to a dead civili-
sation. But the answer isn’t there. 7Russian filmOnly disconnect
In his latestfilm, an Oscar-nominated Russian director widens his lensInstagram this