“The first film in nine years by writer-director Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan, Loveless) sets out to remake La femme infidèle (The Unfaithful Wife), Claude Chabrol’s classic psychological thriller of sexual infidelity and murder, but in ways that profoundly and disturbingly convey the moral decay of his homeland, Russia, in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.
The story follows a ruthless businessman (Dmitriy Mazurov) whose work is disrupted by the insecurity of the war, and then discovers that his wife (Iris Lebedeva) has been unfaithful. Cinematographer Mikhail Krichman’s elegantly austere imagery first summons, and then surpasses, the palette of ’50s film noir, and Zvyagintsev, one of the world’s most precise, rigorous and clear-eyed artists, weaves together a personal tragedy with a geopolitical reality. Chabrol’s chilling 1969 film gave us the tragedy of a marriage; Minotaur, made in the heat of an endless war, serves as a heartbreaking lament for a nation.” —Larry Gross, Telluride Film Festival
