AllMovie

The bleak lives of Moscow's underclass in the Soviet era are highlighted in this simple drama about the love that flowers between a fifteen-year-old youth who is the son of "an enemy of the people," and a waitress who is perhaps six years older than him. They face many obstacles, her hot-tempered, knife-wielding ex-boyfriend not the least of them. When the ex-boyfriend steals money from an untended cash-register, the woman who should have prevented that is arrested and faces a long prison term. However, he has bragged about the theft to his ex, and she turns him into the police with the hope of preventing a jail term for the cashier and of getting rid of the old boyfriend. One bright note in this unremitting examination of futureless lives is the return of the boy's father from prison.