Renowned Moscow opera diva Lyubov Pavlolvna is moving for good to Germany. Just before leaving, she goes on a nostalgic trip with her despondent son Andrey to her almost forgotten birthplace, Yurev, behaving and feeling like a tourist. While visiting the local kremlin, Andrey disappears. Lyubov starts a desperate and fruitless search for her son, after which she decides to stay in the town to wait for her son's return.
In just a few days, Lyubov suffers a painful transformation, eventually finding a common denominator with the locals, whose lives are so different to the glamorous life she has led in the capital.
The film shows the contrast between Lyubov's former world and some provincial Russia outside Moscow (and St. Petersburg and a few other major cities), where life is shown as cold, grim, poor, rude. But perhaps that "lower" life is also good enough, worth living for. And thus life leads Lyubov back to the starting point she had run away from many years earlier.
Not an easy film to watch, but one that I ultimately found rewarding. Despite a few questions about the logic behind certain elements.
Kseniya Rappoport's acting is outstanding, mesmerising. So much talent. She carries the film on her own.
