In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

It is such a heart warming filmed to be nice four-segment TV-series that for a lot of people it can be border-line tear-jerking. Unbelievable all-star-cast for early 70s USSR - makes this worth watching. Actually - the cool part of this TV mini-series - is that it shows - how being mendacious in order to be polite and well-behaved - can severely complicate lives of many really cool and good-hearted people. The guy who is planning to become a great historian finds himself (through being mutually overly secretive with his roller-coaster-ride swiftly head-over-hills fiancée) teaching Adult Ed - in a school for adults run by huge oil refinery. Tricky part is - that every student is an adult - with strong opinions, personal life etc. As the series unfold - it gets more and more complicated. But every scene is full of very kind humor. That's a good material to keep in personal video collection for when one feels down (provided it has English subtitles or one is fluent in Russian. LOL!). It is a reliable cheer-up material.