Pretty, earnest metropolitan artist follows her political-prisoner husband to a prison in a part of Russia that perestroika, power supplies and the police forgot, to teach art in a school where 12-year-old(???!!! More like 24) Misha runs a protection racket. The story consists in Antoninya trying to resolve things with feral Russian yobbos and a talented pupil, while her incarcerated husband (and everybody else) tells her blankly to go home. Oh, and a desperate, creepy history teacher tries to force his attentions on her. Every supporting character is superbly portrayed, with dark, dark humour, like thick black coffee. Will Tonya's optimism beat the bullies, transform lives and win through?
As with most Russian dramas, there's a lot of scene-setting, as if you're at a theatrical production waiting for the main actors to appear. The payoff, you know, is going to be totally worth the wait. The Russians do this better than anyone.
So no specific spoilers, but if you're expecting a nice (bourgeois, comrades!) happy ending, you're in for a nose-dive. I loved it; and the political angle (they lie to us, we lie to them) is perfectly clear.
As with most Russian dramas, there's a lot of scene-setting, as if you're at a theatrical production waiting for the main actors to appear. The payoff, you know, is going to be totally worth the wait. The Russians do this better than anyone.
So no specific spoilers, but if you're expecting a nice (bourgeois, comrades!) happy ending, you're in for a nose-dive. I loved it; and the political angle (they lie to us, we lie to them) is perfectly clear.