“Minotaur,” a pitch-black look at corruption in Putin era Russia, was greeted with a thunderous, eight-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday.
The film marks the return to the Croisette of Andrey Zvyagintsev, the Oscar-nominated auteur, whose previous films, “The Banishment,” “Leviathan” and “Loveless” also bowed at Cannes. Zvyagintsev, his eyes misting as the applause in the Lumière Theatre kept building, was flanked by the film’s stars Dmitriy Mazurov and Iris Lebedeva, who play a couple whose marriage is rocked by infidelity and deception. They were also joined in the auditorium by Boris Kudrin, who plays their teenage son Seryozha — at one point Mazurov tousled Kudrin’s hair.
“I’m grateful to all of you, the audience here at the Lumière theater, for welcoming us so warmly and for giving us the opportunity to make this film and share it with you,” Zvyagintsev told the crowd.
“Minotaur” follows Gleb (Mazurov) a prosperous businessman as he tries to keep his company running smoothly while the authorities keep pressuring him to provide lists of employees they can draft to feed the frontlines of Russia’s war with Ukraine. At the same time, Galina (Lebedeva) has embarked on a torrid affair that threatens to destroy the life that Gleb has built. The film was inspired by Claude Chabrol’s “La femme infidèle,” which also served as the basis of Adrian Lyne’s “Unfaithful.” Because of its scathing look at Putin-ism, “Minotaur” was shot in Latvia, which doubles for Russia.
