On the heels of his award-winning 2003 feature debut The Return,
filmmaker Andrei Zvyagintsev struggles to avoid the sophomore slump with
this art-house crime drama concerning two brothers struggling to keep
their lives together in the face of certain disaster. Soon after
extracting a bullet from his brother's arm, Alex (Konstantin Lavroneko)
relocates his family from the city to his father's old house in the
countryside. As the family settles into their rustic existence, Alex's
wife Vera (Maria
Bonnevie)
reveals that she is pregnant by another man.
Enraged by his wife's
announcement, Alex consults with his brother and demands that Vera
terminate the pregnancy. When the forced abortion goes horribly awry and
Alex's brother suffers a severe heart attack, a confrontation with the
man Alex believes to have seduced his wife send events quickly spiraling
out of control.
