Perhaps it is only because I spent time in Kyrgyzstan as a US Peace Corps volunteer that I loved this film. So - caveat emptor. However, I found much to like in this film, and do not see it simply as Yet Another Film From An 'Obscure' Region, as another reviewer on IMDb.com did. Perhaps this is because I lived in such a village, and had neighbors exactly like the people depicted in the film - they were not cutesy examples of The Other, as the gentleman from Brazil seems to think, writing in another review.
I found that the film was an excellent - and strangely sophisticated, for all the veneer of just simple village folks-ness - example of a work that has one foot in slice of life realism and one foot in more abstracted, symbolic (visual and narrative) film-making. Characters are examples and types, but are human, as well; dialogue is sometimes didactic (if often in caricature) but always has an eye on the camera (the watcher), and an attention to the heart. This is symbolic film-making, but not bleakly so. This is the Soviet pastoral and the Russian tradition of satire holding hands for a bit, if only in realization that they must hold hands to form a common social future.
You need not be a fan of post-Soviet film-making to appreciate this film; it's funny and fascinating as a slice of life. But it is so much more.
