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Liya Akhedzhakova Movies

1977  
 
Sluzhebny Roman won the State Prize of the Russian Federation in 1979 and was well-received by Russian audiences. One of the most popular films by director Eldar Ryazanov, it had no overt political content and was simply a funny romantic comedy. Andrei Myagkov plays a clerk, a widower with two children; Alisa Freindlikh plays his boss, a woman so committed to her career that she spares no time for her appearance. Her manner irritates the clerk so much that he makes a bet with his office-mates that he can awaken the woman in her. He begins, therefore, to court her. She is decidedly dowdy and mannish, and the advances of her clerk catch her by surprise. She seeks advice from her best friend about how to proceed. Based on his bantering manner with her, her friend advises her to invite him to dinner. Even at dinner, she can't soften her brusque office manner, and a fight breaks out. Nonetheless, love eventually wins the day. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

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Starring:
Andrei MyagkovAlisa Freyndlikh, (more)
 
1976  
 
Five years after his intriguing debut, Proverka No Dorogakh, director Alexei German returned with this fascinating examination of differing attitudes toward war. The story concerns Maj. Lopatin (Yuri Nikulin), a writer who goes home to Tashkent to spend a 20-day leave following the Battle of Stalingrad. There, he works with a film crew making a movie based on his articles. His experiences with the crew and in town soon convince him that the romantic views of combat held on the homefront are far different from the harsh realities of frontline warfare. In many ways a precursor to the American war films of Oliver Stone, this excellent study of varying perceptions was banned in the Soviet Union for several years. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

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Starring:
Yuri NikulinLyudmila Gurchenko, (more)
 
1975  
 
Add The Irony of Fate, Or Enjoy Your Bath to Queue Add The Irony of Fate, Or Enjoy Your Bath to top of Queue  
This modestly budgeted, made-for-TV romantic comedy became one of the most popular films in the former Soviet Union and a staple of TV broadcasts on New Year's Eve. It's based on the premise that modern apartment complexes look so much alike that one cannot distinguish one city from another. On New Year's Eve, Muscovite Yevgeny Lukashin (Andrei Myagkov) finally dares to make a marriage proposal to Galya (Olga Naumenko). They plan to celebrate the New Year together quietly, but Lukashin's friends convince him that first he should attend their annual meeting at a bathhouse. The meeting quickly turns into an improvisational bachelor party for Yevgeny. Having consumed large amounts of alcohol, they cannot remember which one of them was supposed to fly to Leningrad to meet his wife. So they put the sleepy Lukashin on a plane. Upon his arrival in the Leningrad airport, Yevgeny gives the taxi driver his Moscow street address and the cab takes him to an apartment complex located on a street with the same name. The building looks very much like his own, so Lukashin, still not quite sober, does not realize that he is in another city. He enters someone else's apartment because his key fits the door lock and he quickly falls asleep on a couch. When the apartment's rightful resident, Nadya (Polish actress Barbara Brylska), comes home, she wakes up the intruder and tells him to get out. The bewildered Yevgeny insists that he is at home and she is the one who should get out. Eventually he sobers and finds out about his predicament. He is about to leave when the situation is further complicated by the arrival of Nadya's straight-laced fiancé Ippolit (Yuri Yakovlev) who does not believe in Lukashin's story and accuses Nadya of being unfaithful. The interaction between the three characters results in Nadya and Yevgeny's gradual falling in love with each other. ~ Yuri German, Rovi

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Starring:
Andrei MyagkovBarbara Brylska, (more)
 
 
1973  
 
It is interesting to note that the disruptions caused in Europe by the Second World War were devastating to countless individuals and families and persisted for many decades beyond the war. This 1973 Soviet film chronicles the dramas arising from the work of an agency that attempts to reunite families separated by that war. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

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Starring:
Oleg ZhakovRimma Manukovskaya, (more)