Whether it will entertain them much is another matter. This underwhelming Spanish-made animated feature, released in time for the half-term, will at least teach the kids a little about ancient history, archaeology and the myth of King Midas. She is terrified that he will leave her, just as he did Zhenya. She left Russia at the first opportunity and now the only communication between father and daughter appears to be through Skype. Zhenya’s boyfriend, who is older than she is, is pining for his grown-up daughter. Their new lovers have their own insecurities and miseries too. It isn’t just Zhenya and Boris who are unhappy. The director is exposing the shallowness and selfishness of his protagonists, who are so bent on their own pleasure and gratification that they don’t notice the pain of others. In the early scenes, the approach is satirical. At one stage, Zhenya even complains that as the boy reaches puberty, he is beginning to smell like his father – and it’s an aroma she can’t stand. The father is too busy trying to begin a family with his new partner to deal with the distraction of a son from a previous marriage. His mother resents the pain he caused her during his birth and seems to despise him. Worse, he hears them as they argue who should have custody of him. The real victim here is Alyosha, the son of Zhenya and Boris, a withdrawn 12-year-old boy who witnesses his parents’ rows. Low-level corruption appears to be everywhere. The news carries stories of predictions of impending catastrophe. The discontent and bad faith of the bickering couple is reflected in society at large. Boris is desperate to hold on to his well-paid white-collar job but knows his employers look askance at staff members who don’t have happy families. Zhenya taunts her ex-husband, telling him she never loved him and only married him to escape her abusive mother. The couple tear strips off one another with a malice that rekindles memories of both Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage (an influence the director has acknowledged). In its account of the breakup of Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Aleksey Rozin), the film is barbed, vicious and darkly humorous. They are prey to the narcissism and insecurity of the social media age. In their suffering and their fatalism, they seem quintessentially old Russian and yet they are living in a very modern world.
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