At the time that the film Malenkaya Vera (Little Vera) (1988) was produced, the Soviet Union was going through perestroika, and businesses, such as film companies, had more freedom to express themselves than they had ever had. Little Vera is one of the first movies to realistically depict contemporary life in Russia at this time. This movie, which had protesters because of the relatively tame sex scene, sold out in the Soviet Union and was also popular in the United States because it was marketed as a teen sex film (Ebert www.suntimes.com). Once this film is viewed, however, it is clear that this is not a story about a teen sex romp. Instead this is a tale, centered on a teenage girl, about a working class Russian family that is barely making it emotionally or physically and the disaffectation of soviet youth in a society that has taken away many of their choices.
As the story begins, the viewer is introduced to the home and the family through a series of vignettes. The teenager, Vera (Natalya Negoda), has graduated from secondary school, is dating someone, and has the chance to get a job as a telephonist while sheÆs waiting for her college acceptance letter. Her parents, a mother who works in a sewing factory and is always unhappy and an alcoholic and abusive father, hope for Vera to be able to get that job and settle down with her steady boyfriend. Yet, Vera (whose name means faith) has another idea and the viewer soon understands that this teenager is constantly fighting the feeling of being physically and emotionally trapped.
This feeling of entrapment is created by sometimes poor and gritty lighting as well as camera angles showing Vera as always touching someone and always near someone, and never having any personal space of her own. ItÆs no wonder that she then decides to rebel by snubbing her steady boyfriend and hanging out with other disaffected youth, especially a student, Sergei, who seems to glamorize a...