Romance de bureau

Eldar Ryazanov's "Sluzhebnyy roman" ("Office Romance" in English) had me properly fooled early on. I assumed that it was going to be a Soviet version of "The Apartment". It turns out that there's a number of surprises on the way, many of them cartoonish. This story of a love affair between maladroit statistician Anatoly Novoseltsev (Andrey Myagkov) and stern boss Lyudmila Kalugina (Alisa Freindlich) hits all the right notes. Overall it comes across as a spoof of day-to-day work in the Soviet Union. It could easily get shown as a double-bill with "The Apartment", "9 to 5", or the opening segment in Monty Python's "Meaning of Life". Really funny.

This is one of the movies made by the best Soviet Director Eldar Ryazanov. The story is about the relationship between a boss (female) and a male worker in the Statistics Organization in Moscow. Unfortunately, this movie could be enjoyed by those who speak some Russian. There are a lot of jokes, which in my opinion are not easy to translate. Only those who know about life in Soviet Union and perhaps visited it (or have some friends over there) could thoroughly enjoy it. Many years later this movie remains one of the favourite movies in Former Soviet Union.

This is really a very good movie - if you haven't seen it yet, do so! It's a really funny movie... I don't know if you can get this movie in english, if you understand russian, this is a movie you h a v e to see!

First Russian movie I have seen on the TV after a very long time. I saw a lot of serious historical Russian movies, so it was really a pleasant surprise for me. Great and enjoyable comedy, excellent actor performances. Simply loved it !!!

Sweet memories for kids like me growing up seeing Soviet films in China during 80's. Thanks to those people doing translations and voices, I found this one so enjoyable. Otherwise, I believe it would be impossible for me to laugh so much when seeing this movie. So many great films from Soviet Union...