Cannes Review: Andrey Zvyagintsev's Minotaur is an Intriguingly Unbalanced Drama

      The final scene in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless features a woman in a "RUSSIA" tracksuit running on a treadmill, serving as a sharp metaphor for a nation heading nowhere. Released in 2017, the film was positioned between the onset of the Donbas war and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with the horrific events reflected in news segments interspersed throughout the narrative of a nuclear family gradually unraveling after their only child goes missing. Throughout Minotaur, people continue to disappear. Set in September 2022, the fortunate few avoiding the frontlines are hastily heading to the nearest borders to escape the draft and start anew far from their homeland. This theme is not new to Zvyagintsev; his works consistently oscillate between personal and broader narratives, intimate dramas, and larger allegories about life under the oppressive Putin regime. His first feature co-written with Simon Lyashenko (rather than his usual collaborator Oleg Negin) continues these long-standing themes, though the shift from personal to grander horrors feels particularly unsettling this time.

      Minotaur loosely adapts Claude Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife, described in its original English poster as a “psycho-sexual study in murder,” in which a husband, upon discovering his wife's unfaithfulness, resolves to kill her lover. Troubled marriages underpin Zvyagintsev’s work, and the relationship between Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov) and Galina (Iris Lebedeva) is as lifeless as those in his previous films. Similar to the strained couples in Loveless and Leviathan, their teenage son, Seryozha (Boris Kudrin), appears to be the sole reason for their continued union. Living in a vast waterfront villa that fails to illuminate the pervasive gloom within, they embody both wealth and misery. Gleb is dedicated to his job, while Galina is involved with a 33-year-old photographer. Their long-lost romance exists in the shadow of a far greater tragedy.

      As the CEO of a major shipping firm vital to the city’s economy and employment—part of a small elite with direct access to the mayor—Gleb grapples with a wave of resignations as staff flee Russia to escape conscription. Amid Putin's “Special Military Operation,” every town must fulfill recruitment quotas, and Gleb is tasked with selecting fourteen employees to be sent off for the country. While Zvyagintsev changes his co-writer, he retains cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, and one of the film's most chilling moments occurs when Krichman’s camera captures a meeting room where Gleb’s chosen employees listen to his instructions. They’ve been told they will be driving new trucks, but later, Zvyagintsev unveils their grim reality as they sit with hundreds of other “volunteers,” while an army spokesperson reminds them they are fighting “to remain human.”

      Minotaur reaches its most impactful moments when it expands its focus, shifting away from the couple to highlight the civilians caught in a war none of them chose. Unlike Loveless and Leviathan, which often utilized proxies—corrupt officials or treacherous clergy—to critique the Putin regime, the scenes in Minotaur combine to make it Zvyagintsev’s most powerful condemnation to date. After moving to Paris in the summer of 2022, and similar to Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors, this film was entirely shot in Latvia, portraying an exiled son’s scathing indictment of a homeland increasingly distant from him.

      However, the viewing experience can feel unbalanced, as the film’s backdrop often eclipses its narrative. The pivotal eruption of violence that disrupts the couple’s life—a moment Zvyagintsev stages in a wordless sequence balancing between farce and horror—follows with a marital drama that feels oddly muted, punctuated by cliched exchanges ("I don’t want to endure," Galina retorts, "I want to live"). This might stem from the film’s setting. Zvyagintsev has skillfully transformed environments into reflections of his characters’ minds; in Leviathan, which remains my favorite of his works, the lingering impression is less about the couple’s conflicts and more about how the vast seaside landscapes mirrored their psychological desolation.

      Minotaur is set in an urban environment, and the indoor spaces captured by Krichman lack the same existential connection with their inhabitants. Furthermore, Zvyagintsev’s attempts to intertwine Gleb’s struggles with his country’s challenges can come off as somewhat heavy-handed, such as when a tension-filled car ride is abruptly interrupted by a train transporting tanks to the front.

      Nonetheless, the film's fluctuating narrative scope is audacious. Zvyagintsev creates a bourgeois love triangle against the backdrop of a war that overshadows everything, raising questions about the significance of domestic