Review by hof-4

As the film opens we are in a train corridor with Alexandra, a pale beauty and Ilya, physician, bespectacled and mustachioed. Both Alexandra and Ilya are in their thirties. They have been conducting a long running affair. Ilya looks like the personification of an intellectual (or perhaps a caricature thereof). They alight from the train at a deserted station, and take a taxi to their destination, a room rented in an isolated cabin. It is fall, the skies are melancholic, misty and cloudy and there are frequent downpours.

Once in their accommodations, Alexandra and Ilya spend their days making love taking walks and talking about their relationship. One senses it's coming to an end perhaps by Ilya's reluctance to abandon his family, perhaps out of sheer boredom. At mealtimes the conversations include the couple that owns the cabin; they have a different point of view from the sophisticated Leningrad couple. They were never in the search for love, rather of "living in kindness". The contrast between the two couples is sharp, as if they live in different worlds. There are a few scenes in the nearby village, one where the couple sits in a tavern in company of the locals and are obviously out of their element. The movie closes in Leningrad, with Alexandra at a friend's house looking obsessively for answers to her dilemma; shall she leave Ilya or not?

Overall, I liked this movie. Even if not much happens on screen the script is sharp and witty with humorous touches, and the director has done an excellent job of avoiding filmed theater by frequent openings to the outside. A movie that achieves its objectives.