This is a story of a blind girl who gets a chance of a lifetime. A rich man offers to her the precious gift of the eyesight, provided that she marries him blindly. This gift opens her eyes on the grim truth of life.
Dovlatov charts six days in the life of a brilliant, ironic writer who saw far beyond the rigid limits of 70s Soviet Russia. Sergei Dovlatov fought to preserve his own talent and decency with poet and writer Joseph Brodsky, while watching his artist friends got crushed by the iron-willed state machinery.
Elena Mihailovna, having worked all her life in the only school of a provincial town, lives modestly in retirement. Unexpectedly she learns of a fatal diagnosis, which can at any moment end her life. Instead of an unbearable anticipation, she resolutely begins the preparation for her own death, in order to simplify the procedure for her son. She has not seen her only son for over five years because he worrks in the capital. Oleg is constantly busy, and he does not have time for his lonely mother. At the same time with all the new problems, the heroine receives as a gift a huge carp, which changes her life.
Five short love stories, which become a statement of the directors about love. A shoemaker, a reporter, a pavement hooker-in, a psychiatric patient and a young man released from prison are the main characters of the film, heroes in a time of no heroes. All of them have the important qualities of being openhearted and not afraid of loving.
Vera Andreyevna and Grigory Petrovich are an elderly couple who have had a long and happy life together. One day in the market Vera Andreyevna runs into an untidy and half-drunk old man whom she recognizes with difficulty. It is Alyosha, who was in the same orphanage with her and who had been her first love. Reminiscences overwhelm them and stir their hearts. Alexei Ivanovich, who had lived a far from easy life, undergoes an amazing change. He begins to look younger and more orderly. Vera Andreyevna feels she is a woman again, a woman who has to make her choice.
The events of the film take place in a resort area South of the seaside city, beautiful and alien. The heroine of the film - girls orphanage for children with a sick spine, physical energy of the characters looking out in painfully cruel scheme of mutual relations. And finds cruel and unfair to the weaker......
