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Little Vera

Little Vera

List Price: $29.95
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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Strident and depressing
Review: "Malen'kaya Vera" opened in Russia in the late 80's, featuring the nation's first on-screen sex act between Natalia Negoda and Soviet heart-throb Andrei Sokolov (sort of a "Leonid" DiCaprio to Eastern teens). Picketers surrounded cinemas protesting it, decrying the morals-corrupting influence of depraved "Western values". Actually the sex scene is extremely tame by American standards. What made this film truly revolutionary was the heretofore prohibited portrayal of toxic family life, including grinding poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, despair, and youthful rebellion. The film may be ground-breaking, but it is also ear-splitting in its stridency. None of the characters are likable enough to care about what happens to them. As other reviewers have mentioned, the acting is superb. The film accomplishes its goal, but it is enough to see it just once.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Strident and depressing
Review: "Malen'kaya Vera" opened in Russia in the late 80's, featuring the nation's first on-screen sex act between Natalia Negoda and Soviet heart-throb Andrei Sokolov (sort of a "Leonid" DiCaprio to Eastern teens). Picketers surrounded cinemas protesting it, decrying the morals-corrupting influence of depraved "Western values". Actually the sex scene is extremely tame by American standards. What made this film truly revolutionary was the heretofore prohibited portrayal of toxic family life, including grinding poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, despair, and youthful rebellion. The film may be ground-breaking, but it is also ear-splitting in its stridency. None of the characters are likable enough to care about what happens to them. As other reviewers have mentioned, the acting is superb. The film accomplishes its goal, but it is enough to see it just once.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A overlooked Russian film on youthful rebellion
Review: During the late '80s in Gorbachev's Soviet Union most film's took advantage of the liberalizing climate to address problems and realities that were often ignored in more oppressive times. Little Vera is one result. The story of a young rebellious girl in a dysfunctional Russian family confronted with adult decisions.

Natalya Negoda is wonderful as Vera, a confused and angry teenager growing into adulthood. Equally excellent is Yuri Nazarov as her alcoholic father. Vera self-destruction steers herself, her lover and the family into flurry of difficulties, including run-ins with police and pregnancy.

This is one of the more realistic depictions of life in Russia that I've seen on film (though most Russian families aren't this dysfunctional). In the midst of Vera's calamities and rebellion we see some genuinely touching scenes with her father, who in spite of her shortcomings and his own alcoholism loves her.

With excellent acting and directing, I highly recommend Little Vera.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A overlooked Russian film on youthful rebellion
Review: During the late `80s in Gorbachev's Soviet Union most film's took advantage of the liberalizing climate to address problems and realities that were often ignored in more oppressive times. Little Vera is one result. The story of a young rebellious girl in a dysfunctional Russian family confronted with adult decisions.

Natalya Negoda is wonderful as Vera, a confused and angry teenager growing into adulthood. Equally excellent is Yuri Nazarov as her alcoholic father. Vera self-destruction steers herself, her lover and the family into flurry of difficulties, including run-ins with police and pregnancy.

This is one of the more realistic depictions of life in Russia that I've seen on film (though most Russian families aren't this dysfunctional). In the midst of Vera's calamities and rebellion we see some genuinely touching scenes with her father, who in spite of her shortcomings and his own alcoholism loves her.

With excellent acting and directing, I highly recommend Little Vera.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good and honest film .
Review: Good , honest , depressing , truthfull film . But it deserves only 3 stars ... not a bit more . The reason why it was a big hit in US :
1. It was depressing anouph to be used in propaganda compain in US .
2. The 2 nude scenes in it , what was BIG deal for Soviet films then , and perfect for male population of the US .
As result , Natalya Negoda get couple good roles in American films . Check out " The Comrades of Summer ".

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: An Ok Movie
Review: I agree with Inna ( who lives in my same town! ) that this movie is ok... Really, it shows a poor working class family's troubles, of which Vera is one of those troubles.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Nothing special
Review: I remember when this movie first came out in USSR. I was fourteen and it seemed that everybody was crazy about this child of perestroyka. But the craze was not so much for the plot, but rather for "let's show the world that perestroyka allowed us to show sex in our movies too!"...I personally didn't like the movie. Really nothing special, unless you would like to learn about life of working class in the last years of Soviet era.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good when first came out, now outdated
Review: I saw this mivie in Russia when it first came out. It was one of the first films of its kind. Now it would only be relevant and interesting for very serious Russian cinema buffs.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: from an American looking in
Review: I saw this movie when I was in Leningrad, before Gorbachev resigned Christmas Eve, 1991. The state-run television station ran it one evening, and I watched it with my Russian friends, who insisted it was a "porno". After the movie, the same people who thought they'd be able to see explicit sex scenes ended up sitting around the kitchen table discussing the movie over vodka and pickles as if it were an obscure painting of the Peter and Paul Fortress.
Whatever, the movie gave me, as a United States citizen, an insight on Russian family, lifestyle, fears and hopes. To many Russians, it seems they consider the film effluvium to be dismissed as they are probably used to so much state-sponsored affect flotsam and jetsam. But to some of us "uneducated", it was enlightening and funny/ironic toward the end, with that "HAAA! HAAA!" attempt at mental escape.
Not to mention, Natalya Negoda is hot! Or should I say, sovsim garyatchaya...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Milestone of Perestroyka
Review: I've seen this film long ago in the former Soviet Union when first video-clubs were officially opened. People wathed this poor quality tape about SU everyday life and at first so close the sexual act with Natalya Negoda as Little Vera in soviet film was shown. It is hard to imagine how great was the influence of this one scene to youth in country where "sex was not at all". Russian actors played great as always but such themes as alcoholism, relationships between children and their parents were shown in very heavy ("No future") manner. For me it was enough to see this film just once.


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