Word: alentova
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...career woman in charge of a huge plant, a mother and an occasional lover of some very occasional men. She is doing all this while still dealing with the utter cynicism of Moscow which talks about Leninism and wants, so badly, the same nice life as anyone else. Vera Alentova plays Katerina with a feel for all this schizophrenia. A strange beauty (but only if you look closely)--she ages with extraordinary carefulness. The last thing overboard is the bouncy, optimism that brought her to Moscow as a girl,--but her wariness has more and more taken it over...
...mode of Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears-this year's Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film-is a kind of patient realism. The style is not flashy, but it is satisfying because it makes clear just what the protagonist, Katerina (Vera Alentova), has suffered and sacrificed in order to earn her nice car and nice apartment and the right to those middle-aged tears that Moscow so distrusts...
...screenplay is full of colorful characters, and Director Menshov has provided a context as direct and likable as his heroine. Alentova makes the transition from young girl to mature woman with little apparent recourse to the makeup table. She effects the more difficult transition-from determination to vulnerability, from practicality to playfulness, from briskness to sympathy-even more brilliantly. It is she who makes this lovely film so memorably winning and true...
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