Aleksey Rozin makes an ordinary man’s cruelty painfully credible. His work with Andrey Zvyagintsev gives us good reason to watch him, though Loveless also shows how a role with almost no tenderness can limit a persuasive actor.
Fi1m perspective
In Loveless (2017), Aleksey Rozin’s Boris argues with Maryana Spivak’s Zhenya as though neither expects anything to change. The arguments have become routine, but that does not make them any less damaging. Rozin is persuasive in this exhausting company: he makes cruelty seem familiar without asking us to find it charming. We found their hostility upsetting because it extends to their child, with no assurance that either parent will put him first.
His collaborations with Andrey Zvyagintsev began with Sergey in Elena (2011), followed by Pasha in Leviathan (2014). The move to the male lead in Loveless gave his skill with flawed, everyday men greater prominence. We admired Leviathan for its acting and its unexpectedly funny, difficult company, though our strongest case for Rozin rests on the later film. There, his lack of exaggeration matters. Boris is recognisable enough that we cannot comfortably dismiss his behaviour as something only a monster would do.
Spivak is essential to that performance, making the quarrels feel practised on both sides. The screenplay by Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin refuses the reassurance that parenthood will bring out something better in them. That is a demanding choice for the actors, and it also limits what they can show us. With tenderness almost entirely removed, there is less opportunity for either to catch us unprepared. We need not like Boris, but we sometimes want to see something beyond the hostility that Rozin has already made so convincing.
Azazello in The Master and Margarita (2024) belongs to a later career that also includes television and commercial films. That is a useful reminder not to treat three films with one director as the whole actor. For an introduction, start with Loveless, provided an evening of parental failure is bearable. After that, we would like to see him given someone with a little more affection to offer.
Biography
Aleksey Rozin is a Russian actor. He was born on 4 February 1978 in Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, USSR (now Tajikistan). He trained at the Moscow Art Theatre School and has been an actor with the Russian Academic Youth Theatre (RAMT) since 2003.
Rozin first collaborated with director Andrey Zvyagintsev in Elena (2011), in which he played Sergey. He appeared as Pasha in Leviathan (2014) and took the lead role of Boris in Loveless (2017), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. He has also appeared in Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest (2020) as Alexey and The Master and Margarita (2024) as Azazello. He received a nomination for the Golden Eagle Award for his performance in Loveless.
