Tatyana Vasilyeva Movies

The trials of a Russian who immigrates to Israel are explored in this Israeli drama. Valery Ostrovsky, an award-winning, egotistical Russian actor, and his family have high hopes when they move to Israel. They are soon disillusioned by its realities. The lifestyle is much lower than what they are accustomed to as they must initially live in a cheap trailer in a desolate neighborhood surrounded by other outsiders. Valery also quickly finds the demand for famous Russian actors is non-existent. He does try to learn Hebrew, with the assistance of Michael, his son's lovely teacher. They quickly become involved. Michael also becomes involved as a friend to Valery's wife Jana. Valery's travails continue as he tries to adjust to his new life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This emotional Russian drama is set in Moscow, 1963 and centers on Elena who works as a hostess at an upscale nightspot. She lives in a single-room flat with her 22-year-old son Yuri. Elena dreams of going with her son, a budding concert pianist, to an important Paris competition, but before they can go, there is much work to be done and she must keep him focused on his music. Unfortunately, Yuri and his fiancee Katya have a tremendous fight after she tells him that she is Jewish (the anti-Semitic Elena fears that the Katya could ruin Yuri's chances of winning the competition). They break up and Yuri turns to a seductive translator for consolation. Meanwhile, Elena is busily hobnobbing, manipulating and doing anything she can to insure her son a place in the competition. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

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