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Declared "luminously beautiful" by the New York Times, Andrey Zvyagintsev's the Return is a stunning mixture of visionary allegory, urgent suspense and road movie momentum. Zvyagintsev's equal skill with lush visuals, lucid storytelling and breathtaking realism easily netted the Return the prestigious Golden Lion and the Best First Feature Film Award at the Venice International Film Festival. Within the emotional vacuum of a fatherless childhood, young brothers Andrei (Vladimir Garin) and Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) have grown closer than most siblings. But when they least expect it, the father the boys have never known returns. Under the cool midnight sun of a coastal Russian summer, Andrei and Ivan eagerly hop into a car for a week long fishing trip with a complete stranger they desperately need to believe is their father. But as they travel deeper into the Russian wilderness, their journey devolves from vacation to boot camp to father-sons love triangle and ultimately to a test of wills that pushes to the brink of violence. As it dawns on the boys that the man who could be their father might be trying to abandon, exploit or kill them, the Return's Jungian landscape gives way to fervid Freudian rage, shocking loss and bittersweet redemption. Harried as one of the most auspicious film debuts since Badlands or the 400 Blows, the Return is both a gorgeous contemporary thriller and an astute updating of vanguard Soviet filmmaking. Disturbing, tender, transcendent, the Return's skillful marriage of psychological complexity to mythic imagery effortlessly evokes the watershed films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Roman Polanski.
