Review

intent on rebelling against her parents’ stric-

_ Probing view of Soviet family

LITTLE VERA. Starring Natalya Negoda.
Directed by Vasili Pichul. A Lenfilm pro-
duction. At Cineplex Odeon theatres.

Little Vera seems to have taken both the
Soviets and the West by storm, but, unfor-
tunately, too often the content of this film
has been barely analyzed. Not surprisingly,
Most Western (male) reviewers have
focused on the extent of nudity, sex, and
youthful revolt contained in it, hailing it as a
landmark in Soviet film. Reportedly, the
young star, Natalya Negoda, has become
the Soviet Union’s first sex symbol with her
lithe good looks and sexy rebelliousness.

IS appears to have detracted from the
More truly revolutionary impact of the
Movie’s message.

Which is too bad, because Little Vera is
Not about sex at all, or even about Soviet
youth in revolt. It is about the family. It is
Not exactly clear what the director, 27-year-
old Vasili Pichul, intended with this stark,
depressing expose of family life in the
Ukraine. In many ways, it is the kind of
movie that can lead to a different conclusion
depending on what political analysis you

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LITTLE VERA emancipation of
women still has a long way to go.

For feminists, it is perhaps one of the
most resounding critiques of the family in
modern life, certainly modern life in the
Soviet Union. Clearly, socialism has not
only not resolved the woman question, it
has not resolved the family question. What
is “the family question,” and who said it
needed a resolution?

Too often when Marxists have discussed
the “woman question,” both in the East and
in the West, they have left out a critique of
the family and the pivotal role it plays in
women’s oppression. But many feminists,
Marxists and non-Marxists alike, have
pointed out that new family forms that are
no longer oppressive to women will also of
necessity liberate children and men. As the
nuclear family. is currently.constituted, it is
more often than not a potential powder keg.

This is intelligently demonstrated in Lit-
tle Vera. The tension in the family is palpa-
bly explosive and increases steadily as the
film progresses. Vera, a young teenager on
her way from high school to college, is

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She lives with them in a small apartment,
which she rarely helps to clean, she stays out
late at night, mixes with the “wrong”
crowd, plays loud rock music, smokes, and
her virginity is long lost. At first it seems
almost embarrassingly typical of the classic
teenage style of the 1960s and 1970s in the
West.

But soon we are given a closer look. We
see the father, a truck driver and an alco-
holic, who Vera takes care of as if she’s done
it all her life. We see Vera’s brother, married
and living in Moscow, who comes to try to
straighten Vera out, but who in reality is
escaping from family problems of his own.

Then there is Sergei, Vera’s lover, to
whom she becomes engaged by telling her
parents she is pregnant so that Sergei can
move in with them. He is possessive of her
and is rude and offensive to her family to the
point of provocation.

Finally, there is the mother, a factory

worker, often on the late shift, who cooks,-

cleans, lines up, shops, but most impor-
tantly, must keep peace in the family. It is
this latter function that is most oppressive,
as she submerges her own feelings, needs
and wants in order to anticipate and try to
make them respect each other’s needs. This
is a classic mother’s role which husbands
and children ultimately despise women for.

Finally, violence erupts between Sergei
and Vera’s father, and Vera is caught
between allegiances as she is pressured by
her family to lie in order to save her father
from jail. Generally a pathetic figure, here
we see a glimpse of the tenderness this man
held for the little daughter he wished he still
had.

A socialist perspective might interpret
this film to be simply critical of the poverty
these families live in and attribute the result-
ing tension to the lack of amenities, the lack
of space for young families, and the alcohol
to which men resort to fill a life of drudgery.

And these are factors to be sure. But it is
hard to avoid the other issues of family life
that oppress: the question of authority (the
patriarch), parents’ expectations of child-
ren, control of sexuality, how emotional
needs are met within familial relationships.

Little Vera gives progressives much to
think about when we envision a society of
the future. Clearly it is not enough to simply
bring women into production.

— Marie Lorenzo

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Pacific Tribune, July 3, 1989 « 7