Little Vera

REVIEW
Hailed as a breakthrough film, Little Vera is one of the first Soviet movies to show nudity as well as expose the internal problems confronting the working class in the USSR. Negoda is wonderful as Vera, a pouty, sultry and restless teenager who falls in love with an older student. Problems erupt after he moves in with Vera, her nervous mother and alcoholic father. This is a fascinating work, showing a Russia not bent on the destruction of the capitalist world, but one embroiled in ethnic strife, where rebellious, Western-influenced teens seek a new life and where the family unit is threatened by the freedoms and sexual promiscuity of the free world. (Russian with English subtitles)