A One Mann’s Movies review of “Minotaur”. (From the 2026 London Film Festival). (2026, 4*, NR).
Minotaur is a remake of Claude Chabrol’s 1969 thriller La femme infidèle (The Unfaithful Wife): as the poster yells, “A Psycho-Sexual Study in Murder”. (The story was also remade in 2002 by Adrian Lyne as Unfaithful, starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane.)
Here we are transported to Russia, just a few years ago at the start of the Ukraine ‘Special Military Operation’ (or Putin’s fuck-fest of a war, as I prefer to refer to it).
Those more cine-literate than I am, who had seen the original, proclaimed on coming out of the screening that it wasn’t nearly as good. That may be so. However, with nothing but the dodgy Richard Gere version to compare it with, I had a good time with this one and enjoyed it. It was classy and engaging.
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
High-powered executive Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov) has his life all under control. But things start to unravel when the Ukraine war puts him into a professional crisis and after he suspects that his gorgeous wife Galena (Iris Lebedeva) is having an affair.
Certification:
UK: NR; US: NR. (This film has not yet received a classification by the BBFC, but I would expect it to be a 15 based on strong violence and language.)
Talent:
Starring: Dmitriy Mazurov, Iris Lebedeva, Boris Kudrin, Yuriy Zavalnyouk, Varvara Shmykova, Vladimir Friedman, Elena Bogdanovich-Golubeva, Mihails Samodahovs, Anatoliy Beliy, Artur Smolyaninov, Kristina Zakharova, Stacy Tolstoy, Volodymyr Gorislavets.
Directed by: Andrey Zvyagintsev.
Written by: Simon Lyashenko, Andrey Zvyagintsev. (Based on the original screenplay by Claude Chabrol.)
Running Time: 2h 15m.
Review:
Positives:
- The world-building here I found really intriguing. We are not pitched into a world of Moscow flats, bottles of dodgy vodka and cabbage soup. We are up at the other end of the social spectrum with the créme de la créme of Russian society. We start in the multi-million rouble house of Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov): it’s a swanky, high-end Dacha in the countryside. Gleb, Galena (Iris Lebedeva) and their stroppy teenage son Seryozha (Boris Kudrin) are all well-dressed and Gleb drives a top-of-the-range Volvo. Communism aims to create a Stateless and Classless Society, but here we see that some have more State and more Class than others! This gives the film a nice glossy, expensive feel a bit like a Gone Girl or A Simple Favour.
- We see Gleb and Galena having dinner with their equally rich friends. The talk over dinner is all about the conscription for the Ukraine war, against a backdrop of dozens of workers just ‘disappearing’ overnight, fleeing to Georgia and other countries to avoid being called up. Indeed, one of the bosses – Denis (Artur Smolyaninov) – is himself fleeing to Thailand “until it all blows over”. Denis is sporting a new, young, blonde trophy-wife Yulia (Stacy Tolstoy), with a good line in cock-jokes. The ‘cigar-talk’ outside turns bawdily to how “tight” and “insatiable” she is. All of this leaves Galena in a foul mood. We learn that Gleb himself has had his “little girlfriends”, but Galena is feeling lonely and undervalued: “I’m tired of being your shadow” she rails. “Where’s me?”. So, we learn that this is a marriage being flimsily help together.
- I enjoyed how the film delved into the professional bind that Gleb was in, having to come up with a list of 14 fighting-age men for the State as Putin’s cannon fodder. The step Gleb takes to meet this requirement feels underhand, devious and manipulative and as the plot thickens, his actions become even more reprehensible. This is not a man the film has you rooting for.
- The affair between Galena and her young photographer friend Anton (Yuriy Zavalnyouk) (which does take place in a dodgy block of Russian flats) is nicely done. The sex itself isn’t shown: we see the foreplay but as they get down to business the camera glides in a 360 degree arc around the flat until it arrives back at the bed and they are in the post-coital cuddle. Stylish.
- In terms of the felony itself, this must go down as one of the most incompetent murders in movie history and certainly the most incompetent forensic cleanups we’ve seen. I found myself almost screaming at the screen with all of the mistakes he was making! Colombo would have wrapped up this case before he even had time to take his dirty mac off! It actually felt really funny, in the same way that Hitchcock dropped funny idiosyncrasies into some of his more gruesome flicks.
- The final reel of the film became remarkably tense as to whether Gleb would be found out or not. And then the resolution of that was satisfyingly dark.
Negatives:
- The situation that Anton puts himself into is just ridiculous! I could imagine the murder being incompetent, but the way in which he set himself up to be a victim beggared belief!
Summary Thoughts:
A neat little drama/thriller that gives a nice sense of time and place and provides some intriguing character development. The drama leaves a bitter taste at the end. Recommended.
By the way, if you wondered how the director Andrey Zvyagintsev gets away with taking such a critical stance against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he doesn’t. He has been declared an enemy of the state and lives in exile in France.
The film is scheduled for release in the US on November 20th 2026 and in the UK one week later on the 27th.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer for the film is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTHeFP0mcuk.
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