Watch Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears For Free

Too much of everything

Don't listen to the negative reviews

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely the worst movie.

Maybe,it sounds not convincing for a public far by period or East realities. but it is a real masterpiece. first, for its unique freshness. because it is more than an inspired love story but a precise and profound wise portrait of society. second...because it is so deep Russian. not only as area but as spirit, in tradition of great literature and cinematography. not the less - for performances. for small presence , in cameo role of Innokenti Smoktunovski, for Batalov and for the magnificent work of Vera Alentova. not the last, for the taste after its end. a sort of emotion who escapes to description. because it is like the air of morning at the first steps out of house.

You might say this is a Russian version of American Graffiti. It starts following the lives of a large group of Russian teens in 1958. However, it follows them through the next 20 years as well. The movie gets more and more interesting as the characters evolve to become more serious. The gradual ageing of the players is quite well done, and pangs of nostalgia for how short life is. Nothing too dramatic happens, marriages, divorces, unplanned pregnancies, meddling mothers. It is all in Russian with subtitles. The characters, though often silly, love each other a lot, and stand by each other. Everyone just revels in the joy of hanging out with friends. It makes you wish you were Russian.

Two periods in the life of a Russian woman trying to find romance. The title seems to come from a Eurovision-type song, though it's not clear exactly who or what 'Moscow' is meant to represent - the Kremlin perhaps. It's a long film but maintains momentum after a manic start and few scenes outstay their welcome - many skip onto the next before we're ready. There's a thick overlay of tacky music, sometimes inappropriate, and loads of dismal but fascinating 70s interior décor. The Russians too are a strange bunch, especially in the brusque way they treat strangers that seems to come from a 'don't-expect-anything-from-me' kind of social inhibition rather than hostility. But this is basically soap opera and the psychology is unconvincing. The woman is formidable at her job, rising from factory worker to some kind of director - almost a national celebrity - yet all the while floundering in her emotional life. She is cold, severe and humourless in the office. If that was meant to represent some spiritual sacrifice, it didn't come across. The little wistfulness in her personality is hardly enough to make her likable. You could pick any woman off the street and find a more involving story. In Part 1 she gets pregnant first time over "Besame Mucho" (it always works) to a guy who's not interested in her. Part 2 resumes 17 or so years later when she finally meets that rare commodity, a decent guy - giving us two emotionally charged bookends to a bleak, workaday, if economically comfortable life. Mr Perfect though is annoying in his unconventional charm and the film gets a little wayward towards the end. This beat "The Last Metro" and "Kagemusha" to the best foreign language Oscar in 1980 - no doubt because it portrayed the Soviets as human and fallible as everyone else, which must have been a relief to the rest of the world.

This is one of the most captivating love stories I've ever seen on film. It starts with a young woman (Katya, played by Vera Alentova) reporting to her Worker's Dormitory friends that she has flunked by two points the exam to get into university. It ends with the most incredible sweetness of life.It is like a French film done by a Russian company (which is what it is). The Moscow we see that does not believe in tears does believe in love, and it is not a Moscow of politics, although some people do call one another "comrade." This is a woman's point of view film (a "chick flick") that transcends any genre cage. It begins slowly, almost painfully dull in a way that will remind the viewer of all the clichés about Russia, the unstylish dress, the worker's paradise that isn't, the sharp contrast between Moscow and the peasants who live outside the city. Katya works in a factory. She works at a drill press. She is obviously underemployed. Lyudmila (Irina Muravyova) works in a bakery. She is probably gainfully employed for the time and place. They are friends, twentysomethings who are on the make for a man, but not a man from the sticks. They pretend to be university post docs or something close to that and they impress some people as they house-sit a beautiful Moscow apartment.This is how their adult life begins in a sense. Lyudmila falls in love with an athlete; Katya becomes infatuated with a television cameraman. One thing leads to another and before we know it they are forty. Neither relationship worked out. The athlete becomes an alcoholic, the cameraman, in the sway of his mother, believes that Katya is beneath him (once he finds out that she works in a factory). How wrong he is, of course.But no more of the plot. I won't spoil it. The plot is important. The characterizations are important. The story is like a Russian novel in that it spans lots of time, but once you are engaged you will find that the two and a half hours fly by and you will, perhaps like me, say at the end "What a great movie!" My hat is off to director Vladimir Menshov and to Valentin Chernykh who wrote the script and to the cast. I've mentioned Vera Alentova and Irina Muravyova, but Aleksey Batlov who played Gosha was also excellent. I don't want to say anymore. Just watch the film. It is one of the best I've ever seen.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)