<...>the action takes place in a Moscow communal apartment in 1952-53. The apartment is inhabited by a good dozen Soviet citizens, including two embittered war veterans (alcoholics); a profiteer hack musician who made his tainted riches in the Tashkent evacuation; his Jewish wife, an escapee from the Holocaust; an ex-Party VIP, whose whole family perished during the Siege of Leningrad; a war widow and her unruly sons; and the intelligent doctor-cum-writer, who—together with the episodically emerging history teacher—carries out the narrative task of tackling difficult questions and regulating impossible answers.<...>
Polina Barskova, kinokultura.com