The film is based on the story of Anatoly Kurchatkin "House of Women". A tragicomedy about four women of three generations who lives in a tiny Moscow apartment: a sick grandmother, constantly requiring attention; a mother, very peculiar woman, who still hoping to somehow arrange her personal life; and two daughters, each of whom has a lot of problems.
Based on Boris Akunin's novel 'Azazel' (English title 'The Winter Queen') set in Moscow in 1876. The novel started a long series quite popular in Russia. In 'Azazel' a young police officer - Erast Fandorin - investigates an odd suicide of some rich young man and finds a complex conspiracy, trying to take over most European countries - from Britain to Ottoman Empire - with the best intentions, of course.
To earn money for married life, a young engaged man takes a job as an engineer on a privately operated oil drilling rig in the far North of Russia. A friend's letter brings the sad news that his fiancée has already married someone else and in desperation he quits his job and flies back to Moscow. There all his vast efforts to win her back seem in vain...
A young businessman believes that money and fortune are the most important things in the world. One day he loses all his money and faces the necessity to reconsider and change his life.
Olga Voznesenskaya is a silent screen star whose pictures are so popular that underground revolutionaries risk capture to see them. She's in southern Russia filming a tear-jerker as the Bolsheviks get closer to Moscow. Although married, she spends time every day with Victor Pototsky, the film's cameraman. Gradually, it comes to light that Victor uses his job as a cover for filming White atrocities and Red heroism: he's a Bolshevik. He asks her for help, and she discovers meaning in her otherwise flighty and self-centred life. Love blooms. Will the Red forces arrive in time to save them from a suspicious White military leader? Will she find courage?
The central character of the play, Fedor Protasov, is tormented by the belief that his wife Liza has never really chosen between him and the more conventional Victor Karenin, a rival for her hand. He wants to kill himself, but doesn't have the nerve. Running away from his life, he first falls in with Gypsies, and into a sexual relationship with a Gypsy singer, Masha. Meanwhile, his wife, presuming him dead, has married the other man.
Ivan Mirosnikov, a cheeky young man in the Gorbachev era, is trying to figure out what to do with his life (he's not in college, and the 2-year mandatory military service is looming large ahead of him). Meanwhile, he lives with his divorced mother, and works as a courier at a Russian newspaper. Through his job, he meets patronizing Professor Kuznetzov and his rebellious daughter Katya. To annoy the professor, Ivan claims to have an affair with Katya. To his surprise, Katya backs his story up.