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.

Nicole Renee What I found so interesting about this film was the incredible contrast of subject matter and mood between this film and the Russian films that came before it.A product of Glasnost, in an attempt to modernize the cinema and remove censorship, allowed for Russians to be shown realistically and their individual stories be told instead of a happy Russian body of agreeable people.The film addresses the reality of dysfunctional families, crammed into small apartments, alcoholism, poverty, and young adults confused and rebelling against authority.Little Vera depicts Vera and her family with attitudes of hopelessness, apathy and loneliness.I liked the movie for the fact that it is ground breaking – showing problematic issues and stories of individuals that were never or could never be shown on screen previously under oppressive governments.I personally wouldn't watch it again. Its worth watching once! Once was enough for me because I hated all the characters and was left depressed after watching a movie where people are constantly fighting –but that- I think is the point of the film.

havran_del A gritty presentation of the decay of family values and human dignity in the wake of Soviet communism, Vasili Pichul's 1988 film Little Vera is a landmark film of modern Russian cinema. Pichul's brutal drama marks a strong departure from the images of sanitized idealism promoted in Soviet times (as in Aleksandrov's Circus), brashly moving the social chaos of his time into the public spotlight. A contemporary Ukrainian setting further intensifies the effect, first by the immediacy of the film to its time period, second by its utilization of a locale not only struggling for identity in lieu of a Soviet system, but also as a nation distinct from the Russian idiom that had dominated the U.S.S.R.Vera, the film's title character and protagonist, is a rebellious adolescent girl with a "dysfunctional" family including a hard-drinking father and a mother care-worn. Rejecting her would-be beau Andrei, Vera begins a destructive (and primarily sexual) relationship with a college student named Sergei. Despite her parents' dislike for the lazy Sergei, and despite Sergei's rude contempt for her parents, he moves into their cramped apartment. Tensions escalate until Vera's father drunkenly stabs Sergei. Vera must decide if she will stay loyal to her intolerable family by testifying her father acted in self-defense, or continue to support and defend the ever-detached Sergei. Unbearable in almost every imaginable way, Little Vera masterfully captures and communicates the inescapable void left in social life after the collapse of communism. The sexual aggressiveness of the film (it was the first film to show explicit sex) combined with the unrelenting presentation of social reality (a marked distinction from the socialist realism demanded by Stalin) effectively confronted the conditions of former-Soviet life. Most interesting, however, was public reception. While many wrote hate mail to the director and star, the film was wildly popular. Here the double-edged nature of "film as social criticism" emerges: if done correctly, the film will make the audience uncomfortable. Because no easy solution presents itself, some viewers will hate the film and filmmakers for "bringing up" the issue. Many films come to mind as somewhat comparable in this regard: Larry Clark's Kids, Harmony Korine's Gummo, even popular movie's such as John Hughes' Breakfast Club. I recommend this film to those viewers for whom the prospect of nearly two hours excruciating domestic conflict and social miasma is not overly daunting. The film is absolutely beautiful, and incredibly challenging. Despite the difficulties of watching the film, some moments within it are profoundly beautiful. Of course, the socio-historic and cultural significance of the film cannot be overlooked, and in fact operate as an even more assertive reason for watching this film.

Claudio Carvalho In Russia, the ordinary teenager Vera (Natalya Negoda) lives a leisured life with her drunkard father and her simpleton mother, without working and waiting for the calling for a technical course of telephone operator. Her brother Victor (Aleksandr Negreba) lives in Moscow with the family of his own and occasionally visits his dysfunctional family and Vera, being always motive for arguing. When Vera meets the student of university Sergei (Andrei Sokolov), they fall in love for each other and decide to get married. Sergei moves to Vera's house, but lives in conflict with her father. This relationship leads the family to a tragedy.I have just seen "Malenkaya Vera", and I liked a lot this deep family drama. I am not familiarized with the life style in the former URSS, but there are some unusual behaviors that I found very interesting. The first one, when Victor tells Vera that she was conceived not because her parents wanted to have her, but because they wanted to move to a larger apartment. Another one, when the family goes to the beach in a truck. Many difficulties of Vera's family and their friends, the repression in the park and other situations pictured in the movie are common in Third World countries. This low budget movie is very well-directed, and the story is very profound and real. The cast has great performances and the actress Natalya Negoda is very beautiful. In the cover of the Brazilian VHS, released by Sagres distributor, there is information that Natalya Negoda was the centerfold of Playboy magazine. I am not sure how precise are the subtitles in Portuguese, since many long sentences spoken in Russian are limited to short translation in few words. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "A Pequena Vera" ("The Little Vera")