Yelena Yakovleva Movies

A family is confronted with an unexpected and troubling new arrival in this emotional drama from Russia. Yulik Krymov (Leonid Yarmolnik) is a scientist and author who shares his home with his wife Rita (Yelena Yakovleva) and their two children, Anya (Marianna Ilyina) and Igor (Artyom Shalimov). Their domestic calm is shattered one day when Yulik discovers he has a third child he never knew about -- Pavel (Daniil Spivakovsky), the product of a long-forgotten one-night stand 20 years ago. Pavel has recently arrived home after suffering severe injuries as a Russian soldier fighting in Chechnya; his mother can no longer care for him, and has decided it is Yulik's turn to mind his son. Physically scarred and emotionally ravaged, Pavel is hardly a comforting presence, and Igor makes no secret of his fear and distrust of the new arrival, but his younger sister, Anya, has a kinder heart and befriends the shattered soul. To Rita, however, Pavel is a reminder of Yulik's decades-old infidelity, and his presence drives a wedge between her and her husband. Meanwhile, Pavel's need for expensive surgery, his powerful delusions that Chechnyan soldiers are hiding in the attic, and his insistence that his best friend will be coming to visit soon add up to far more than the family is able to deal with. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The irony of the title becomes apparent at the story's end in this lively Russian comedy that follows the daily lives of four young people living in a suburban Moscow hostel in 1950 when Stalin's regime was at its peak of power. The foursome are all attending the Art Institute and spend their free-time, of which they seem to have plenty, playing games. All of them are terribly poor, but they treat this as a kind of game, spending their energy involving themselves in affairs rather than fretting about the things they lack. They also enjoy playing practical jokes, some of them quite nasty, upon one another. Among their many games is one in which a student uses a secret radio to pretend he is "the Voice of America." In another scene, a student gets on the air and announces a new socialist welfare plan. This leads the authorities to question another student who in terror bursts into hysterical tears. Eventually, Stalin's secret police capture each of the youths and have them cruelly executed. In the final scene though, the four are seen running free upon the streets of Moscow. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Tatyana (Yelena Yakovleva) works as a nurse in a hospital in Leningrad. However, she has wants that her salary cannot provide for her, and sometimes she earns some hard currency by sleeping with foreign tourists. One of these is an uninspiring Swedish man, who offers to marry her. She is tempted, because she believes that the material aspect of life in Sweden is infinitely superior to that in Russia. Overcoming the resistence of the bureaucracy to her marriage, she succeeds in moving to Sweden with her new husband. Alas, she is soon bored with her new existence, and returns to her old hooking habits. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide