Final Rating: 4.5/5
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur is a relatively simple story made incredibly complex and nuanced by its circumstances. The basic premise follows Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov), a Russian business executive living with his family just outside a small city in the country, who suspects his wife Galina (Iris Lebedova) is straying from their not-so-happy marriage. Lingering over everything is the current Russia-Ukraine war and unease it is creating for everything and everyone in day-to-day life.
Gleb and Galina’s marriage has clearly been growing distant for some time before the film begins, with some hints that there was some previous philandering that Gleb had participated in. If it was not for their teenage son Seryozha (Boris Kudrin), it’s likely their marriage would already be over.
Galina does not really even do much to hide her suspicious actions: being constantly on her phone as soon as she’s alone, waiting for Gleb’s car to leave after dropping her off before walking in an opposite direction to where she went, making salon appointments that she does not keep. Eventually, it’s revealed to us that she is having an affair with local photographer Anton (Yuriy Zavalnyouk).
Gleb and Galina both try to be good parents to Seryozha at points, but this starts to wane with Gleb spending more time with work and Galina’s mind elsewhere. Things deteriorate to the point where Gleb hires a private investigator to follow Galina, who confirms the suspected affair and Anton’s identity.
If this premise sounds familiar, that’s because it is based upon the 1969 Claude Chabrol film The Unfaithful Wife which was also the source material for another more recent film, Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful from 2002. Zvyagintsev’s adaptation of this story finds its own footing in several different ways.
Visually, Minotaur is more pulled back and removed from the specific perspectives of its characters. We’re not seeing the story from the point of view of Gleb or Galina; we’re watching more from afar, from static perspectives, through a window, across a street. The cinematography purposefully framed with this distance, playing up the more neo-noir aspects of the story.
Noir is an interesting touchpoint to Minotaur as well. Traditionally, the genre always had an edge of impending doom brought on by the Cold War and the atomic threat. The dread hanging over this film is evident by the visual of Gleb’s employees watching bombs go off via YouTube videos, by the discussions he has with his middle manager about employee morale and how many they’ve already lost to defection, and by news clips of the massive queues of people looking to cross the borders into nearby Georgia and Kazakhstan. To compound this, the town’s mayor summons Gleb and other local company executives with secretive orders passed down from the high command.
Ultimately, the film becomes the push and pull on Gleb as a man, husband, father, and person in a position of power. He tries to be a good father and positive male role model to Seryozha, giving him advice on dealing with a bully at school to be smart rather than acting out physically.
But choices Gleb makes in other areas beget more violence, whether he thinks he is being smart or reacting in the moment. All moments of sympathy the audience could have for him are eventually squandered.
The elusive title of the film does hold some thematic keys to what unravels in this film. The minotaur from Greek mythology is the beast with the head of a bull and body of a man living in the middle of a labyrinth, and the ruler King Minos offered human sacrifices to the beast as retribution for the death of its son. It’s a cycle where violence begets more violence, where those in power sacrifice those who are not to maintain the status quo.
Minotaur is a haunting film that is meant to linger with the viewer, asking more questions than it answers. It makes sense that Andrey Zvyagintsev is a noted critic of the current Russian regime and was only able to make this film after defecting to France several years ago.
It’s also no surprise that it made a big splash at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, taking home the prestigious Grand Prix for Zvyagintsev. It’s poignant, timely, and leaves viewers with a lot to ponder beyond a simple story of adultery.
Minotaur was seen during the 2026 Calgary International Film Festival.
