Nadezhda (aka Nadya), a school director and WWII heroine pilot is greatly respected by everybody. When she expels a boy from school for pushing a girl (she started it) Nadya gets to thinking. She had to make it in a man's world and has to continue being tough every day (deny her femininity, in a way) to get ahead. But is she maybe overdoing it a little? When offered a dance she declines although she would probably like to, and she denies that there is anything more than a platonic friendship between her and a male museum director. In what situations can she allow letting her guard down, allow being seen as a woman? She and her adopted daughter are more like good acquaintances, having completely different ideas about life and about being a woman. Where did she go wrong? She meets women who are quite happy with the modest roles assigned to them, apparently a lot happier than her. Is this the life she wanted?
All this thematically rich contemplating and melancholy of Nadya's happens without words. Mostly what we see is Nadya doing her job, administrating, exchanging words with people who recognize her, dealing with a young student who looks up to her, wandering around, going to bars, etc. She clearly isn't all stern and cold, she puts on a matryoshka doll costume to perform in a school play when a student suddenly drops out, she has a little personal woman-to-woman talk with a bar woman and then waltzes with her through the deserted bar, she gets giddy practically as soon as she smells alcohol and hence makes a fool of herself at her daughter's wedding celebration. In between all this we often see her thinking. What she really thinks about mostly is up to the viewer to interpret. One reviewer, for example, figured that Nadya's thoughts are purely those of nostalgia, for she is stuck in the glory days of her past while the present passes her by. Well, some of the things I think she thought about you can read in the first paragraph, so this review is thereby concluded.
