Plot
The movie is set in Moscow during the late 1950s and the late 1970s. The plot centers on three young women who come to Moscow from smaller towns: Katerina, Lyudmila, and Antonina. They are placed together in a university dormitory apartment and eventually become friends. Katerina (Vera Alentova) strives to earn her degree and also works hard at a factory. She is asked to house-sit an apartment for her well-to-do Moscow relatives while they are away on a trip, and Lyudmila (Irina Muravyova) convinces her to throw a dinner party at the apartment and pretend that they are the daughters of a rich professor, as a ploy to meet successful Muscovite men. At the party, each young woman meets a man who is destined to change her life. Lyudmila meets Sergei, a famous hockey player. Antonina meets Nikolai, a reserved but kind young man. Katerina meets Rudolf (Yuri Vasilyev), a smooth talker who works as a cameraman for a television channel. He eventually forces himself on Katerina, resulting in her becoming pregnant. Upon discovering that Katerina does not actually come from a rich professor's family, Rudolf refuses to marry her or acknowledge the child as his own. Rudolf's mother tells Katerina to stop bothering her son and offers her money, which Katerina refuses. This leaves Katerina alone with the baby.
The movie shows Katerina with tears in her eyes setting her alarm clock in a dormitory where she just arrived after bearing her daughter, Alexandra (subsequently played as a grown young woman by Natalya Vavilova), then takes a 20-year leap forward in time. Katerina is then shown waking up to the sound of an alarm clock in her own apartment. She is still single, but she had gone from being a down on her luck student to becoming the executive director of a large factory. She has a lover, an older married man named Volodya (Oleg Tabakov), but she is left feeling empty by the affair. Despite her career success, Katerina seems unfulfilled and weighed down by a deep sadness. She is still close friends with Lyudmila and Antonina. After the party, Lyudmila had seduced and married Sergei, but shortly after he quit playing hockey and became an alcoholic. Antonina also married, and alone among the three friends found happiness with her husband, Nikolai, with whom she had three children.
One evening when Katerina is returning home from Antonina's dacha in the countryside on an elektrichka train, she meets a man named Gosha (Aleksey Batalov). Soon afterward they start seeing each other. As their romance begins, Rudolf unexpectedly reenters Katarina's life. He is part of a news crew that arrives at Katerina's factory to do a report on the factory's success at exceeding the production quota. He does not recognize his ex-lover at first but when he does, he wants to make amends and meet his daughter. Katerina lets him know that she does not want to see him again. But Rudolf shows up uninvited at her apartment one evening when Katerina is having dinner with Gosha and Alexandra. It is an awkward scene. Rudolf tells Gosha and Alexandra about the interview. At that moment, Gosha finds out that Katerina is a factory director and realizes that her salary must be larger than his own. Coming from a society where many men relished their role as the breadwinners of the family, Gosha finds his pride wounded, becomes upset, and leaves in a huff.
For several days, Gosha disappears from Katerina's life, no longer visiting or returning her calls. Katerina becomes frantic. Her former dormitory roommates gather in her apartment and decide to help. Nikolai (Boris Smorchkov), the husband of Antonina, sets out to find Gosha. He finds him drinking and, after getting drunk with him, he convinces Gosha to return to Katerina.
The final scene of the movie is set in the kitchen of Katerina's flat. Gosha eats at the table. Katerina watches him with tears in her eyes. Gosha asks "What's wrong?" Katerina replies: "I have been looking for you for so long". After a moment of thought, Gosha says: "eight days." Katerina says "No," and repeats, "I have been looking for you for so long," implying that Gosha is the first decent man she has met since that fateful dinner party twenty years ago.
Read more about this topic: Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears
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