‘Little Vera’ (NR)

Watching "Little Vera," with its frank presentation of Soviet squalor, alcoholism and familial strife, you don't feel as if anything new is being revealed, even though you're seeing something you've never seen before. The new official Soviet attitude of permissiveness in the arts is on full display here, but that seems to be the movie's only point. It's openness for openness' sake.

Perhaps within the context of that country's history this is enough in itself, but when you're sitting in the theater that's not exactly what comes to mind. "Little Vera" is a glasnost "Rebel Without A Cause," and in the Soviet Union, where it has sold more than 50 million tickets, clearly it has struck a receptive chord. There are several possible explanations for this, none perhaps any deeper than the provocative appearance of its star or the fact that it is the first Russian film ever to show a couple actually making love.

If you've ever seen any movies about the problems between misunderstood teen-agers and their parents -- what used to be called the "generation gap" -- you will recognize Vera. All too well, in fact. A moody slouch is de rigueur for every disaffected teen, regardless of country, and as Vera, Natalya Negoda has hers down pat. In her frosted punk hair, black leather mini and fishnet stockings, Vera has a sort of slugged sensuality. She looks as if she was born with a butt hanging off her lip.

Every night Vera's mother, who works in a sewing factory, yammers at her incessantly about her clothes, her hair, her friends, her attitude. Her father, a truck driver who puts away enough home-brewed gin to float the Russian Navy, enthusiastically joins in, calling her, among other things, a slut and lamenting that they didn't beat her often enough. Through all this, the camera sits outside the door of the kitchen, capturing the cramped ugliness and the hopelessness of these people's lives, and all the while you feel as if you've checked into a hotel room and the couple next door won't stop arguing. You just want to bang on the wall to get them to shut up!

If Vera were a more vivid character, if she were more distinctive, these conflicts might carry some human meaning. It might make sense, for example, if the passionate lovemaking she engages in with Sergei (Andrei Sokolov), the caddish young womanizer who becomes her fiance, were portrayed as an escape into sex, but for the most part, we can't fathom her true feelings toward either her lover or her parents. Negoda, who came to prominence as the glasnost pinup girl in Playboy, has some personality as an actress, but she doesn't seem to have much a natural instinct for the camera. She has a habit of turning her head away or dropping it down so that you don't feel you've gotten a very good look at her (the director has a lot to do with this). As a result, her face never fully registers. Three minutes after the picture is over, her features are a blur.

Even so, the movie is of some sociological interest. The portrayal of working-class living conditions is excoriatingly frank and close to the bone. Director Vasily Pichul and his wife, screenwriter Maria Khmelik, don't flinch from the overwhelming seaminess of these lives, and there's courage in the presentation of this corrosively pessimistic slice-of-Soviet-life. Progress in a culture can be measured in any number of ways, even by the ability to produce mediocre art. In this sense, "Little Vera" is a sign of significant cultural advances. Still, undeniably, it is mediocre. The filmmakers have done only half their job -- they've lifted the rock, but they haven't done much with what they've found under it.

"Little Vera" is unrated but contains some harsh language, drug use and nudity.