Little Vera 1988

Young Vera Natalya Negoda is a twenty-year-old who has just finished school. Her parents want her to apply to university, but she instead gravitates toward late nights, dancing, and the nightlife she shares with her best friend Lena Aleksandra Tabakova. She loves American and Western European rock and pop, adopting styles inspired by Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, and Debbie Harry. Vera lives with her mother Rita Lyudmila Zaytseva and her alcoholic father, Kolya Yuriy Nazarov, and the couple grow increasingly unhappy with the company she keeps and what they view as a decadent lifestyle. They wonder why she can’t be more like her brother Victor Aleksandr Negreba, a doctor living in Moscow.

At an underground dance party that is broken up by police, Vera meets Sergei Andrey Sokolov, and the two immediately fall in love. Sergei is an old friend of Victor, who, in town for a visit, calls on his friend only to find him alone with Vera.

Vera and Sergei decide to marry, but her parents object. Vera convinces them to accept by falsely telling her mother she is pregnant. Sergei’s first meeting with her parents is disastrous, and he leaves with Vera but soon comes to live with them.

The tension between Sergei and Kolya rises and peaks on Kolya’s birthday. Frustrated with his drunken ways, Sergei locks him in the bathroom, where Kolya breaks the basin. When he is let out, Kolya stabs Sergei in the side, an injury that sends him into a long hospitalization.

Vera’s mother tries to get Vera to tell authorities that Sergei caused the wound accidentally, hoping to keep Kolya out of prison. Victor, visiting from Moscow, prescribes tranquilizers to calm Vera. The family goes to the beach for a picnic, ostensibly to help Vera forget the trouble, but Vera suspects it is a ploy to make her lie.

A storm hits as the family prepares to leave, and Vera disappears. Kolya searches for her, and the couple is seen embracing on the beach.

Vera testifies that her father was not to blame for what happened to Sergei. She visits him in the hospital and explains that the family needed Kolya to survive. Sergei seems uninterested in her, telling her to go away.

Back home, Vera is alone, drinking and taking pills. Victor arrives and rescues her. Sergei escapes from the hospital and arrives on the scene.

Because I was scared

When Vera asks Sergei why he came back, he replies that he did so “Because I was scared.” Kolya sits alone in the kitchen after Vera has been put to bed. He slowly collapses and calls out to Victor and then Vera. It is assumed that he dies.

A subplot follows Andrey Andrey Fomin, Vera’s former classmate who is infatuated with her and wants her to marry him. At the film’s start, he is about to leave for naval training and tries to persuade Vera to come home with him, but she spurns his advances. Later, on Vera’s way home from visiting Sergei in the hospital, Andrey is on leave for a day and again tries to arrange a tryst, only to have Vera fend him off with force.