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Mother Maria (Ludmilla Kasatkina) is so very saintly and predictable from the time she leaves her native Russia in 1917, through her establishing a home for Russian immigrants in Paris and joining the French resistance movement that it becomes hard to identify with her actions and decisions - even those made in the concentration camp. The real-life Russian poetess (Elisaveta Jurevna Kuzmina Karavaeva) must have had more depth. Director Sergei Kolosov has similarly not shown the less admirable side of French life during the war. In 1975, Sergei Kolosov worked with Ludmilla Kasatkina in Pomni Imya Svoye, a critically acclaimed war story that set standards this collaboration does not meet.