Maryana Spivack and Aleksey Rozin are getting divorced,. They've moved on to new lovers and have to sell their old apartment and deal with the fact that his boss is a Fundamentalist Christian who will fire him if he finds out he has gotten a divorce, which will compromise child support for their 12-year-old son. They're two smart, attractive-looking, terrible human beings, and when their son turns up missing, the audience gets to watch them fight and wrangle and be terrible human beings for two hours and seven minutes. There are brief respites when we watch the guy in charge of the volunteers who help find kidnapped children -- because the authorities are terrible -- who is efficient at his job, and it's always a pleasure to watch someone do a job well. There's also one funny scene in which the two leads go visit her terrible mother to see if the son is there. She's old and paranoid and as hateful as her daughter, and so forth.
All the shots are deliberately slow so the awfulness of the situation can penetrate to anyone who isn't aware that this is a bad thing; and there are plenty of recapitulated shots to serve as chapter headings, so people will know that, well, doctor, here we are again. The performances are great, but perhaps a general nuclear strike would be the best ending to this movie.
All the shots are deliberately slow so the awfulness of the situation can penetrate to anyone who isn't aware that this is a bad thing; and there are plenty of recapitulated shots to serve as chapter headings, so people will know that, well, doctor, here we are again. The performances are great, but perhaps a general nuclear strike would be the best ending to this movie.