Pyotr Shcherbakov Movies

In this humorous sexual romp, the story begins as its hero (Gennadiy Khazanov), now an old man, is being pushed in his wheelchair at a Black Sea resort in post-Soviet Russia. His nurse is prim and very professional, the essence of asexual coolness. In a series of flashbacks, memories are screened of the man's happier days as a student in postwar Moscow, and then as a photographer at the same resort in the 1950s. He was an inveterate womanizer, and most of the time, the women were as willing as he was. His romantic career continued without major setbacks (though his encounter with a houseful of lesbians was a bit daunting), until he inadvertently begins an affair with the mistress of Stalin's chief spymaster and torturer, Laventy Beria. When he finds out about who her other boyfriend does, it is at a very inopportune time, and he suffers an attack of impotence which afflicts him frequently thereafter, for he cannot get the spymaster's face (and the fate he barely escaped) out of his mind. However, sometime in the course of these recollections, his memory heals itself, and he is potent once again, as is proved by the warm and protective way his once-cool nurse cares for him at the end of the film. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This melodrama with a kind heart revolves around a decrepit old-age home that is in worse shape than some of its tenants. After Dr. Voloshina (Zhanna Bolotova) arrives on the scene, the leaky roofs get fixed, and everything is spiffed up, including the elderly residents who are given a renewed lease on life by the caring doctor. The old and new are contrasted in other ways as well: as residents discuss the bygone revolutionary days, modern music fills the room from a TV set, and helicopters make their noisy way to a nearby military base. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide