Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1980)

  8.0 Popcorn Boxes

This film won the 1980 Academy award for Best Foreign Language Film.   It's in Russian with English subtitles (which are unusually clear and easy to read even from across the room).

Three young women in their 20s decide to move to Moscow (in 1958) to improve their career prospects, find better living conditions, and, last but not least, meet young men.  The latter proves to be the biggest problem.  The three, Katerina, Antonina, and Luidmilla first live in poor accommodations, in a worker's dormitory.  They cook up a scheme to house sit in a luxurious apartment, and pretend to have glamorous jobs.  They then throw a party, and invite a variety of attractive, desirable men to socialize with.  The party starts to fall apart when they can't describe what they do in their jobs.  They each do met an man, and start relationships.  Pregnancies follow, and two of the girls are discarded along the way.

Flash forward 20 years to 1978.  We see the girls now grown.  The story starts to revolved around Katerina, who has moved up in her factory from the floor to a director of the firm.  She meets the man who impregnated her, leaving her with a now 20 year old daughter.  She has no interest in him, however.  She subsequently meets a man on the train.  He's smitten and follows her off the train, and hails a cab for the both of them.  They then have a relationship.  The rest of the film follows their somewhat stormy pairing.

The film is 150 minutes long, and that seems about the right length to tell the three women's stories, then and now.  It's in color, and the set design and production values are good, especially for 1980s USSR.  One of the interesting things about the film is that it gives us a look at the Soviet Union a decade before it fell apart.

The living conditions for the three are generally pretty good, having access to nice apartments and modest country houses.  One suspects, though, that being produced under the auspices of the Soviet government, that the apartments are a bit nicer than they would have been for the average citizen.  I've been to Russia, and while it's true that there are two Russias, Moscow and everywhere else, the living situations I saw where much shabbier than portrayed here.  For example, the grocery store is extremely well-stocked, with more goods than your average US store.

I liked the film.  It's a nice slice-of-life, coming-of-age film set in a foreign country that used to be our sworn enemy (and maybe will be again).  The women are on average pretty well acted, and the supporting cast is good.  I'd recommend the film to anyone interested in seeing a time capsule of the old Soviet Union, and also those interested in relationship dynamics.