Little Vera (1988)
"Malenkaya Vera" (original title)

A story about a young woman, Vera, who is somebody, living the life of a troubled teenager in the time right before the end of the Soviet Union. She lives in a very small Russian apartment ... See full summary »

Director:

Vasili Pichul

Writer:

Mariya Khmelik

Stars:

Natalya Negoda, Andrey Sokolov, Yuriy Nazarov

7 wins & 8 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Natalya Negoda	...	Vera
Andrey Sokolov	...	Sergei
Yuriy Nazarov	...	Vera's Father
Lyudmila Zaytseva	...	Vera's Mother
Aleksandr Negreba	...	Victor, Vera's Brother (as Aleksandr Alekseyev-Nyegreba)
Aleksandra Tabakova	...	Chistyakova
Andrey Fomin	...	Andrei
Aleksandr Mironov	...	Tolik
Aleksandr Lenkov	...	Mikhail Petrovich
Vadim Zakharchenko
Mariya Khmelik
Anatoliy Vasilev
Gennadi Goryachev	...	(as G. Goryachev)
Ye. Maryutina
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Max Warmflash	...	(voice)

Storyline

A story about a young woman, Vera, who is somebody, living the life of a troubled teenager in the time right before the end of the Soviet Union. She lives in a very small Russian apartment with her mother and father, however being this close to each other makes the living get rough. Their daily life is plagued with massive amounts of alcohol (mainly vodka) and when she tries to escape her home life, she meets up with a boyfriend, Sergei who then moves into her already small apartment after sleeping with her. Every day little Vera has to go through hell just to get by, which even involves her going against her own morals after her father has done something extremely wrong.

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Plot Keywords:

teenager | love | russia | student | alcoholism | 

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

Soviet Union

Language:

Russian

Release Date:

28 April 1989 (USA)

Also Known As:

Little Vera

Filming Locations:

Moscow, Russia

Box Office

Gross:

$1,262,598 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Gorky Film Studios

Technical Specs

Runtime:

128 min 128 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Connections

References Still of the Night (1982)

User Reviews

Deep Family Drama

In Russia, the ordinary teenager Vera (Natalya Negoda) lives a leisured life with her drunkard father and her simpleton mother, without working and waiting for the calling for a technical course of telephone operator. Her brother Victor (Aleksandr Negreba) lives in Moscow with the family of his own and occasionally visits his dysfunctional family and Vera, being always motive for arguing. When Vera meets the student of university Sergei (Andrei Sokolov), they fall in love for each other and decide to get married. Sergei moves to Vera's house, but lives in conflict with her father. This relationship leads the family to a tragedy.

I have just seen "Malenkaya Vera", and I liked a lot this deep family drama. I am not familiarized with the life style in the former URSS, but there are some unusual behaviors that I found very interesting. The first one, when Victor tells Vera that she was conceived not because her parents wanted to have her, but because they wanted to move to a larger apartment. Another one, when the family goes to the beach in a truck. Many difficulties of Vera's family and their friends, the repression in the park and other situations pictured in the movie are common in Third World countries. This low budget movie is very well-directed, and the story is very profound and real. The cast has great performances and the actress Natalya Negoda is very beautiful. In the cover of the Brazilian VHS, released by Sagres distributor, there is information that Natalya Negoda was the centerfold of Playboy magazine. I am not sure how precise are the subtitles in Portuguese, since many long sentences spoken in Russian are limited to short translation in few words. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Pequena Vera" ("The Little Vera")