Little Vera (1988) User Reviews

Malenkaya Masochistic Movie Masterpiece

[havran_del · 8/10 · 10 December 2007]

A gritty presentation of the decay of family values and human dignity in the wake of Soviet communism, Vasili Pichul's 1988 film Little Vera is a landmark film of modern Russian cinema. Pichul's brutal drama marks a strong departure from the images of sanitized idealism promoted in Soviet times (as in Aleksandrov's Circus), brashly moving the social chaos of his time into the public spotlight. A contemporary Ukrainian setting further intensifies the effect, first by the immediacy of the film to its time period, second by its utilization of a locale not only struggling for identity in lieu of a Soviet system, but also as a nation distinct from the Russian idiom that had dominated the U.S.S.R.

Vera, the film's title character and protagonist, is a rebellious adolescent girl with a "dysfunctional" family including a hard-drinking father and a mother care-worn. Rejecting her would-be beau Andrei, Vera begins a destructive (and primarily sexual) relationship with a college student named Sergei. Despite her parents' dislike for the lazy Sergei, and despite Sergei's rude contempt for her parents, he moves into their cramped apartment. Tensions escalate until Vera's father drunkenly stabs Sergei. Vera must decide if she will stay loyal to her intolerable family by testifying her father acted in self-defense, or continue to support and defend the ever-detached Sergei.

Unbearable in almost every imaginable way, Little Vera masterfully captures and communicates the inescapable void left in social life after the collapse of communism. The sexual aggressiveness of the film (it was the first film to show explicit sex) combined with the unrelenting presentation of social reality (a marked distinction from the socialist realism demanded by Stalin) effectively confronted the conditions of former-Soviet life. Most interesting, however, was public reception. While many wrote hate mail to the director and star, the film was wildly popular. Here the double-edged nature of "film as social criticism" emerges: if done correctly, the film will make the audience uncomfortable. Because no easy solution presents itself, some viewers will hate the film and filmmakers for "bringing up" the issue. Many films come to mind as somewhat comparable in this regard: Larry Clark's Kids, Harmony Korine's Gummo, even popular movie's such as John Hughes' Breakfast Club.

I recommend this film to those viewers for whom the prospect of nearly two hours excruciating domestic conflict and social miasma is not overly daunting. The film is absolutely beautiful, and incredibly challenging. Despite the difficulties of watching the film, some moments within it are profoundly beautiful. Of course, the socio-historic and cultural significance of the film cannot be overlooked, and in fact operate as an even more assertive reason for watching this film.

Deep Family Drama

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 21 October 2005]

In Russia, the ordinary teenager Vera (Natalya Negoda) lives a leisured life with her drunkard father and her simpleton mother, without working and waiting for the calling for a technical course of telephone operator. Her brother Victor (Aleksandr Negreba) lives in Moscow with the family of his own and occasionally visits his dysfunctional family and Vera, being always motive for arguing. When Vera meets the student of university Sergei (Andrei Sokolov), they fall in love for each other and decide to get married. Sergei moves to Vera's house, but lives in conflict with her father. This relationship leads the family to a tragedy.

I have just seen "Malenkaya Vera", and I liked a lot this deep family drama. I am not familiarized with the life style in the former URSS, but there are some unusual behaviors that I found very interesting. The first one, when Victor tells Vera that she was conceived not because her parents wanted to have her, but because they wanted to move to a larger apartment. Another one, when the family goes to the beach in a truck. Many difficulties of Vera's family and their friends, the repression in the park and other situations pictured in the movie are common in Third World countries. This low budget movie is very well-directed, and the story is very profound and real. The cast has great performances and the actress Natalya Negoda is very beautiful. In the cover of the Brazilian VHS, released by Sagres distributor, there is information that Natalya Negoda was the centerfold of Playboy magazine. I am not sure how precise are the subtitles in Portuguese, since many long sentences spoken in Russian are limited to short translation in few words. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Pequena Vera" ("The Little Vera")

A shocking film painted in shades of decay and rust

[kittinjc · 8/10 · 8 December 2007]

Little Vera is the story of a Russian teenager, her family, and her attempts to find meaning and value in a life sliding increasingly into decay. In her search for meaning, she falls in love with a more intellectual and rebellious Sergei, whose hatred for her deeply flawed parents quickly spirals out of control.

Little Vera is shocking and disturbing in nearly every way. The drinking of the father, the enabling and lack of understanding of the mother, the casual lies and misdirection of the brother, and Vera herself forgiving them all their flaws are all shocking and slightly disturbing to watch. However, the raw honesty of the film somehow manages to become even more shocking than the plot or characters. Set in cramped spaces and vast urban decay, Little Vera presented a vastly different view of Soviet life than had ever been seen before. In fact, Little Vera is a portrait of the collapse of Soviet society painted in shades of pain, desperation, and rust. It is the implosion of a family set against the implosion of an entire social order.

Although painful and desperately unsatisfying, the film itself is definitely worth seeing, if only to understand the feelings and cultures still reshaping Russia today.

A Closed, Cramped World

[khubbard-1 · 5 May 2004]

Please Note: This review mentions key moments in this film. Do not read if you have not seen the movie!

Vera, the protagonist in the film Little Vera, lives in a closed, cramped world. She is trying to escape, both emotionally and physically, but in the end is no closer to freedom. Most of the reviews I read brought up the recurrent theme of limited space in this movie. The family apartment represents Vera's closed world in the simplest sense. She has no room to move, no room to grow and no room to find herself. Everywhere she turns the finds herself face to face with her mother, father, brother or simply a wall.

However, the family apartment is only one way that the director maintains this constant feeling of confinement. Throughout the film, Vera is rarely shown at a distance. She is always in a small room, or sitting directly next to someone else, or being physically smothered by those around her (Andrei, Sergei, etc.). She is almost always in physical contact with another person. During the rare times that she truly is alone, such as when she is attempting suicide, the camera only zooms in closer. In this way, the lens replaces the walls and smothering humanity, itself becoming an object of confinement.

If visual effects of confinement aren't possible, then sound is used to heighten the sense of disparity. Most of the dialogue in Little Vera, with the exception of less intense moments when the music volume is increased, is shouted, yelled or screamed. Vera's family is constantly in conflict and even the most civil dinner eventually erupts into argument. I found the constant barrage of sound equally as suffocating as the repeated scenes within the tiny apartment, and twice as hard on the nerves. Unlike Vera, however, we could leave when it was all over.

It is hard not to feel sorry for Vera at the end of the movie, but is our sympathy justified? She returns, time and again, to the very apartment and situation that is slowly taking the life out of her. Can she really be considered a victim if she is bringing a lot of her misery upon herself?

Made during the waning days of the Soviet Union, director Vasily Pichul's kitchen-sink drama is at once an utterly engrossing ethnography of lumpen Soviet life.

[khanbaliq2 · 7/10 · 25 June 2010]

In a dull Russian industrial town, a young woman (Natalya Negoda) without plans for her life mixes with a heavy-drinking crowd and enjoys casual sex. Little Vera was the leader in ticket sales in the Soviet Union in 1988, and was the most successful Soviet film in the US since Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears (1979).

This ultra-realistic look at life caused an uproar in Russia on its release; it certainly marks a change from state-approved films glorifying communism and collectivism. Yet though its reputation precedes it, Little Vera seems unexceptional by western standards, though decidedly bleak.

Fine for a grungy indie

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 25 November 2014]

Vera is a rebellious daughter of dissatisfied proletariat parents. Her father Kolya is an alcoholic. They keep referring to her older brother Victor who is a success in Moscow. They don't like her lifestyle or her friends. She falls for Sergei and decides to marry. It raises the tension in the family. Sergei and and Kolya don't get along. Sergei starts living with the family but it doesn't go well in one violent drunken confrontation.

The film looks pretty grainy and weak compared to most indies of that time. It was sold as the first sex scene in Soviet cinema but there is nothing erotic about this movie. It is gritty, and dirty. The overbearing poverty is the backdrop. That is the more compelling aspect. The story of a rebellious daughter and family dysfunction is not necessarily original. It is somewhat new to see it portrayed about Russia at that time. The movie is filled with a downtrodden sadness and that goes for the lead actress Natalya Negoda. It's fine as a grungy indie and notable for being a Soviet film.

The Real Deal

[pelotard · 9/10 · 28 May 2008]

Forget every spy movie you've ever seen - this is what life was like in the USSR, and still is in many places in Russia and the ex-Soviet countries. Vera dreams of life of leisure, as she imagines the West to be; her reality is very different, with a bitter mother, a violent father, and the ever-present alcohol. And her prospects for the future are not much better. She finds a man and they try to patch up a life together, but he is afflicted by the same environment, both socially and physically - the scenery in this movie is brilliant, sitting comfortably in the company of post-apocalyptic movies but obviously done with no special effects; they have just walked in and shot whatever happened to be in front of the camera.

Forget your stereotyped, cold Russians of spy movies. This is the Real Deal: people are passionate, vibrant, and present in a way you'll never see in a drama from the West.

A profound social document

[fred3f · 10/10 · 11 March 2005]

It is difficult, today and in the US, to understand this movie. We have nothing, really, to compare it with. Here is an attempt at comparison: It is as if during the last years of Saddam's rule, a filmmaker in Iraq were somehow able to make a film, which, for the first time ever, showed life as it really was lived in that country. The life of ordinary young girl, with all the terror and the repression full blown. Then the film was exhibited freely in Iraq. If you could imagine that unlikely event, then you might have an idea of what went on with this film in the last few years of the Soviet Union. Prior to this film, Soviet cinema was highly censored. Soviet movies would only show an ideal life in the worker's paradise. Then suddenly this. The alcoholism, the random sex, the ugly wasteland that was the Soviet city, the choking pollution, the proletariat victimizing each other and themselves, the utter hopelessness - it is all there. People were stunned. Soviet women would often weep during the showings. Many would say that this is the story of their lives. It was a cultural earthquake the like of which filmmakers only dream of accomplishing. It undoubtedly hastened the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Reading the reviews here, I can see that few understand this film. One says it was groundbreaking because it contained real sex. To the Soviet viewers at the time, the sex was a minor event compared to fact that it portrayed reality for the first time in Soviet cinema.

Others compare it to current films such as "As Good as it Gets" Might as well compare Homer's Illiad to the latest John Grissam novel. They simply do not compare. This is not just a film, this is was a social document, and a transforming social force. It needs to be viewed that way or you will not understand the film.

Other reviewers see it as a film about a dysfunctional Russian family. One even says that it is difficult to feel sorry for Vera because she keeps coming back to her family. The point is that Vera and her family are symbols for all of Soviet life. There was nowhere else to go, because the family down the block and in the next town were the same. This was life in the Soviet Union for most people.

This is a film that can be viewed on many levels: as a drama it traces the landscape of despair, as a social document it shows the living conditions of the time, as a political document it shows the attitude of the people and many of the reasons for the break-up of the Soviet Union, and as a moral document it shows the evils of a dictatorship that is out of control, and the cruelties that victims will practice on each other.

Little Vera clearly shows the human toll that Socialism eventually takes on its victims, despite any good intentions that system may have. In doing so it helped end the Soviet regime thus contributing to one of the major changes in modern history. This film achieves what only a few films have ever accomplished. It is not only an stunning representation of history but it also become a force in that shaped history.

rebel without a manifesto

[mjneu59 · 5/10 · 2 December 2010]

This once notorious drama (at least in its own country) was hailed as a breakthrough when first released simply for daring to show modern Soviet life without the usual State-approved propaganda halo, in all its actual anti-bureaucratic grubbiness. But watching the film on this side of the erstwhile Iron Curtain only reinforces the notion that Soviet youth culture is thirty years behind the rest of the world: despite the often oppressive details it might be just another quaint teen delinquency relic from early 1960s Hollywood, dubbed into Russian and updated with casual sex and drug abuse. In other words, it's hardly a revelation to discover that Russian kids are just as misunderstood by adults as their American role models. But while the attitudes may look dated to Western audiences, it's at least an honest attempt to portray something of the boredom and defiant posturing of youth, in a country not exactly noted for addressing its generation gap.

She may have little faith, but there's lots of faith to be had in the movie.

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 30 March 2006]

One of the major aspects of "Malenkaya Vera" (called "Little Vera" in English) is that it was the first movie from the Soviet Union that featured a sex scene, albeit a short one. The title is important: Vera is the Russian word for "faith", identifying that punk Vera (Natalya Negoda) has little faith in the Soviet system. And as the movie shows, there's not much faith to be had in it. The opening scene shows the bleak industrial town of Zhdanov, nearly a hell on earth. When Vera's lover Sergei (Andrey Sokolov) moves in with her family, it leads to some unexpected events.

Like in many Russian movies, people's names describe their characters. For example, there's Viktor (remember that "victor" means winner). All in all, this is a good look at the Soviet Union while it was collapsing - and we can see why it was collapsing. Really good.

Not worth the celluloid it's printed on

[italy_rules · 1/10 · 8 June 2017]

I hate this film. I saw it in a Russian theater at a late-night premiere back in 1988 and has never since then had an impulse to see it again. There is absolutely nothing about it to "understand" or appreciate. It is pure kitchen-sink trash disguised as a serious social study. You really think that the Soviets were all prostitutes, drunks, delinquents, and no-goods living off their parents? You believe that life in the USSR was hopelessly drab and that literally everything was so bad it's hard to see now how people still managed to survive in such a gutter of a country? Come on! As someone who was born and raised in the Soviet Union, I can swear on the Bible that nothing can be as remote from the truth as this portrayal of everyday Soviet life.

It looks like "Little Vera" was made with two goals in mind: to defame everything Soviet and to make a big buck out of showing some insipid soft-core sex, nudity, and drug use. Admittedly, it achieved both goals. The only reason that anyone may still be interested in seeing this garbage is that it seems to have been the first of what would become a wave of similarly themed films in the late 1980s–early 1990s. Those films offered increasingly graphic depictions of nudity, sexuality, rape, and violence mixed with zoological anti-Communism and peddled sluts and mafia soldiers as role models. Don't get me wrong – I'm a big fan of Western sleaze and all things exploitation (what else one would want to watch in post-Soviet Russia?), but "Little Vera" is different. I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

Final years of the Soviet Union.

[inthemiks · 10/10 · 11 April 2017]

It's alarming, to say the least, how little the English speaking world knows about Russia's past. Everyone keeps saying Russia, but I grew up in the Soviet Union, and I can't really call it an exclusively Russian film like everyone else. Ironically, this movie was filmed in Zhdanov(Mariupol), which is now a part of Ukriane. The director chose this city because that's where he was from and he wanted to show the reality of life there. This city always been a ghetto. Now it's even worse, since that part of Ukraine is engulfed in a civil war. So the hopeless openededness of this film was right on point. Unfortunately, I have a feeling the main character would most likely die sometime in the 90's to early 2000's. Even moving wouldn't help, cause the whole area of the former Soviet Union later became a total cesspool of violent crime and drug/alcohol addiction.

During the late 80's, right before the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a plethora of similar films, but for some weird reason only this one was known outside of the country. There were films with worse sex scenes before and after this one, and unlike many other countries, there was no censorship, so TV was full of nudity at the time. So I am really confused why this was praised for a "sex scene", or "rock n' roll"(?!). This film is none of that. This era of Soviet film was actually called "Chernuha" which translates as darkness, despair, gritty. Films during this time were full of realism, had this art-house vibe and yet very genuine acting, and always had a somewhat hidden psychological or philosophical dilemma in it. Sounds like Oscar's winner Moonlight. Indeed, if Moonlight took place in the 80's Soviet Union, and instead of drugs people were drinking, it would fit right in. Some scenes are almost identical with those Soviet films. (i.e. filming a pot on a stove for a good 1 minute or so, or a character is staring at something or thinking for a long time.) I actually seen a lot of them when I was a kid, but it took me decades to watch most of them again. Many never been preserved and therefore are in a very bad shape and some I still can't find, so they were pretty much lost during the switch to the digital format. During the 90's, Russian society rejected everything from the Soviet era. Even this film would have probably been lost if it wasn't for this unusual international hype about it because of some naive sex scene.

There are some odd moments in the film that I only noticed when I watched it as an adult. There is really good and rare collector's items Italo-Disco(CC Catch) blasting from TV during the house party. A phenomena of an underground music style in North America that was only played at gay clubs, was actually a mainstream thing in the Soviet Union. Then there is a clear pedophile situation at a cafe between a man and a very young girl. Another strange scene is where Vera gets accidentally hit by a pot in the head by her drunk girlfriend with a black kid. It was also sort of disturbing to see how she was calling him names and screaming at him when she was drunk, which followed by a scene where he was alone watching a silly cartoon on TV about staying away from Africa because it has dangerous animals, while it's very obvious that life for this kid with black skin in that hell hole of a town is probably worse than being in an African jungle...

The film is as real as it gets. The life was like this for most of the Soviet Union back then. So I definitely would recommend it as a learning artifact. Also Vera means hope. So the name of the film in Russian means also "A very little hope".

Married with children made in USSR (vhs)

[leplatypus · 10/10 · 10 September 2016]

Maybe my title is a bit too much but it's the best way i found to depict this late soviet drama movie: as the funny American show, it's about a low income dysfunctional family with a sweet mother, a hard- working but grumpy father, a studious brother and a free daughter! Their life is set in an apocalyptic sea town with decaying ships, small and bare apartments! If this was the paradise of workers, I wonder what their hell was like? The future awaiting this teen is indeed bleak and falling in love is difficult. What's is sure is that they are left to communicate as they can't escape with things (except music, alcohol and food). In a way, they can't be spoiled and must care: Vera has only 4 dress! The cast is really good and this little Vera is moving as every lost souls I can meet in my films travels! For her and for the communist dream that comes apart from everywhere, this prophetic movie is a must see!

worth watching once

[ngriffi · 11 December 2007]

What I found so interesting about this film was the incredible contrast of subject matter and mood between this film and the Russian films that came before it.

A product of Glasnost, in an attempt to modernize the cinema and remove censorship, allowed for Russians to be shown realistically and their individual stories be told instead of a happy Russian body of agreeable people.

The film addresses the reality of dysfunctional families, crammed into small apartments, alcoholism, poverty, and young adults confused and rebelling against authority.

Little Vera depicts Vera and her family with attitudes of hopelessness, apathy and loneliness.

I liked the movie for the fact that it is ground breaking – showing problematic issues and stories of individuals that were never or could never be shown on screen previously under oppressive governments.

I personally wouldn't watch it again. Its worth watching once! Once was enough for me because I hated all the characters and was left depressed after watching a movie where people are constantly fighting –but that- I think is the point of the film.

Overrated movie (Minor spoilers)

[vbb76 · 1/10 · 11 August 2014]

I'm from an ex-communist country, SFR Yugoslavia, which didn't belong to the Eastern Bloc, but it was non-aligned and more liberal than the USSR. Erotica, violence and social commentary were common in our films and we had an access to western films. Maybe that's an explanation why "Little Vera" did not impress me much, no matter how "daring" it was for the soviet standards.

This is one of the worst movies I've seen in my life. How come it received such awards and even a sort of cult status? The Wall Street Journal bombastically (mis)described it as: Sex, drugs and rocknroll! The Time Magazine praised it as: A smash hit! If you are looking for a soviet film along those lines, then forget "Little Vera" and watch "Avariya doch menta" (Avariya the Cop's Daughter).

It's a rough social drama about the youth subcultures during the turbulent period of the Perestroika and it offers much more action and tension than "Little Vera".

I thought that "Little Vera" would be something similar and although it's beginning was somewhat promising, I soon realized that my expectations were wrong.

After some scenes of parties and violence, the movie slowed down and for the next hour and a half, it's protagonists were only mumbling something among themselves. It was painfully slow. Nothing much was happening, until suddenly everyone went nuts and almost killed each other for no apparent reason.

"Little Vera" is overrated just because it was the first soviet movie with a more explicit erotic scenes and it's main actress Natalya Negoda became the first real soviet sex symbol. That's all about the "importance" of this film in the history of cinema. Explicit erotica was a shocking novelty for the soviet audience in those days, but naked breasts and simulated sex alone do not make a movie great.

Speaking of drugs, there is some abuse of legal tranquilizers mixed with alcohol in the film, but this is not a story about heroin addicts or something like that, as some of you may expected.

The "rocknroll" in "Little Vera" is actually the bubble gum pop singer Sofia Rotaru, who was already 40 at the time of the filming. Not much a "youth rebellion". In comparison, "Avariya doch menta" features punk rock and heavy metal music, which was much more dangerous and radical in those days.

The Wall Street Journal's "Sex, drugs & rocknroll" description only partially fits "Little Vera" and it's misguiding to a large extent. And it's not really a "hit movie" as the Time Magazine said. On the contrary, "Little Vera" is more a sort of psychological drama.

Some of the movie posters that I found online are also misguiding. They would make you think you that this is a crime movie. or even an action-comedy.

I'm not so much disappointed by the movie itself, but I'm more disappointed by it's inaccurate description and the exaggerated praise in the media.

I understand that "Little Vera" has some qualities. It was noticed not only for it's explicit erotica, but also for it's social commentary.

It shows the depressing provincial towns of the Soviet Union and families living in small claustrophobic flats. It shows how the youngsters began to rebel against the authority during the Perestroika.

Vera's father is depicted as a drunk, while her mother is like "what the neighbors will think". You get the picture.

Back then this was considered a brave social criticism.

But anyway, the film left me completely emotionless. I felt absolutely no sympathy or compassion for Vera, even less for her boyfriend Sergei (Andrey Sokolov), who behaves like an arrogant pr****.

Even the drunk father was a more interesting character in the film than both of them, though they are the main protagonists in it.

If you are looking for more "edgy" films about the youths in the former USSR, then watch the aforementioned "Avariya doch menta", then "Menya zovut Arlekino", "Patsany", "Rokovaya oshibka", "Luna Park" or the more recent "Lilja 4-ever".

Excellent view for problems of people which live in socialist country

[Ioan · 10/10 · 27 March 2001]

First of all this movie is a piece of reality very well realized artistically. Some kind of combination between "American Beauty" and "As Good as it gets". And of course something specifically to all Russian movies ( of course the valuable one, no dirty propaganda !) : the problem of loneliness of man ... Especially recommended for the people which really want to see beyond all vomitive propaganda about communism ( both positive or negative propaganda ! ). A movie about common people, their problems, lack of satisfactions - especially for young ones, fear when touch the real and too dirty face of the society ... and about the fake "solutions" : alcohol and violence ... and probably the only real solution : true love ... Of course it's very well "located" in the space and time of "Russian perestroika" but it's valid for all the society ( except a perfect one, but don't worry - not possible to find this on our Earth !). For the last time - definitely recommended ...

poor little Vera

[anweinandy · 8/10 · 27 November 2007]

There was a lot about Little Vera that was strange to me. All in all I did enjoy this movie, but a lot of the way the characters behaved was not what I was used to. For example the environment that Vera's family lived in was very tense. Almost every time the family was together they were either drinking, fighting or yelling and frequently it was a combination of the three. After I had viewed the film I felt tense because of all the confrontation that took place during it. I was however very interested in watching the story if this middle class Russian family. Throughout the entire film we are reminded of the industrialized state of Russia because of the repeated shots of a train passing by the screen. It gave the viewer a sense of a mechanically lived life. The characters seemed to be focused on living their lives through work and drinking after work. There was not a feeling of happiness throughout the film. The only time a character was not yelling was when Vera first fell in love with her fiancé Sergei. This was very short lived because the viewer later discovers (after Sergei locks Vera's father in a bathroom and Vera lets him out after which the father proceeds to stab Sergei) that he is abusive. Another time Vera is told that the only reason she was born was so the family could get a larger apartment. It is very interesting watching how both Vera and the family were able to cope with each other's behavior. The film was definitely worth watching because of its depiction of how life could be in areas of Russia.

Groundbreaking movie

[dropdead99 · 10/10 · 21 April 2000]

This movie was groundbreaking in the former Soviet Union because it was the first movie released there that contained a real sex scene. However, the movie can be considered great for many reasons, not the least of which is its true, gritty portrayal of disillusionment and pain in the family of a working class Soviet family. I would definitely recommend it.