james odinga 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.

SnoopyStyle 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.

vbb76 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".

Michael Neumann 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.