Andrey Zvyagintsev's third film. His first film, The Return, made in 2003, is one of my favorite films of the previous decade (his sophomore feature, Banishment, never got distribution in the United States). I've been waiting forever to see something else by him. This is a huge disappointment, though. A very beautiful one, but still. It's very thin. Elena is a middle-aged woman married to an older man. She apparently stole him from his first wife (though their history isn't gone into deeply enough to know for sure). Elena wants him to lend money to her son and his family, who are having financial difficulties. Before he makes a decision about that, he has a non fatal heart attack. During his hospital stay, he reconnects with his estranged daughter from his first marriage. This strengthens his resolve not to help his stepson, which leads Elena to make a drastic decision. This film just takes forever with the set-up before it gets to any interesting plot development. The characters are mostly unlikeable and mostly two-dimensional. Even the lead, Elena, is fairly uncomplex. Actress Nadezhda Markina does well with her one big scene, but that's about it. Elena Lyadova, who plays Elena's step-daughter, has a couple of good moments, too, but she's not in the film enough to make an impression. There's one killer sequence that reminds one of the brilliance of The Return, but it feels like it's from a different movie (it applies to the main plot only metaphorically). All in all, this is a pretty but empty picture.