Winter Cherries 1985

Olga Elena Safonova is a beautiful, intelligent 30-year-old researcher living in Soviet Leningrad. She is divorced and a devoted mother to her 5-year-old son Anton. She longs for happiness and a life shared with someone who loves her, believing that family and a sense of home are essential to living well.

Her circle includes Valya Larisa Udovichenko, a childless daycare educator who shares a life with a blunt hockey player named Alexander Sergei Parshin. Nearby, Larisa Pavlovna Nina Ruslanova is a divorced accountant who raises her own son Sergei, watching the romantic misfires around her with quiet irony and care.

Olga experiences love and affection, yet her relationship with a married, self-centered lover leaves a bitter aftertaste. The man is Vadim Vitaly Solomin, and their affair is marked by his reluctance to leave his family and the strain it causes Olga.

To try to recalibrate her life, Olga leaves Anton for five days to attend to her future. First, the old bachelor Veniamin Aleksandr Lenkov appears; at 36, he has never been married and still lives with his mother. Their first evening together ends abruptly when he quietly leaves Olga’s apartment, forcing her to hurry back to fetch Anton.

Then a different kind of potential partner appears: Herbert Ivars Kalnins, a dashing Muscovite who spends time both in the city and in Switzerland. He seems to embody the real-world dream of partnership, and even Larisa Pavlovna nods in cautious approval as she sees Olga’s hope rekindled. Olga and Anton accompany Herbert to Moscow, imagining a future that might finally steady their lives.

Meanwhile, Vadim understands what he stands to lose as he watches the trio depart, and Olga’s gamble on a new life grows more precarious. Olga makes a difficult choice, letting go of the prospective groom and returning to Leningrad with Anton, and with the man she truly loves by her side. Yet the glow of a fresh start fades quickly, and the story settles into a quiet, unresolved truth: love may arrive, but the dream of a simple, enduring family remains elusive.