EndCommittee on Cinematography
of the Russian Federation
Russian Television
Nicola Film
present
Produced by Igor KALYONOV
a Kira MURATOVA film
A PASSIONS
Starring
Svetlana KOLENDA
Renata LITVINOVA
Mikhail DEMIDOV
Vassily RYBAKIN
Alexei SHEVCHENKO
Gennady TKACHENKO
Victor PAVLOV
Umirzak SHMANOV
Sergey POPOV
Nikolai SHATOKHIN
Yevgheny RAKHMANIN
Yekaterina LOBANOVA
Violetta IGNATOVA-DELVARI
A PASSIONS
Look, they're up!
Over there, by the white dog.
It just started running.
You see now?
Right there! See?
Over there.
Sasha! Milashevsky!
Fantastic!
Where's Milashevsky?
Ah, he's in hospital!
You're really something, Sasha!
How interesting!
You fool!
Come on, come on!
She'll be pissed off.
Let's go back!
Just like kids.
Who can tell me exactly,
were wild stallions...
Wild horses, not stallions.
Were wild stallions faster
than the present, trained ones?
It's the same as comparing
Schwarzenegger to Ilya Muromets.
Can you compare racers
with circus horses?
You can, to the disadvantage
of the circus.
Meet my fellow-sufferer,
Violetta.
Sasha, your friend doesn't
understand.
You just don't know,
you can't even imagine
what it takes to prepare
an equestrian acrobatic turn.
A great deal depends on the horse
and the trainer here...
Our stud-farms
sell only poor horses to the circus.
The ones that exhibit no talent
in their main calling.
Violetta is a circus performer!
And what is the horse's principal
calling?
Their principal calling
is racing!
No one has any pity for circus horses.
Let them get crippled.
What is the horse's principal calling
in life?
Mysticism!
No one has any pity for horses
that exhibit no talent in racing,
let them get crippled.
What is the principal...
What did you come here for?
Yuri Nikulin wasn't admitted to
theatre and turned a clown.
What verse do you like most,
Violetta?
Fet, Tyutchev, Maykov.
Well... Lermontov.
Hi!
I've come to give you a manicure.
Hi!
Are they taking him to the morgue?
I'll fix your fingernails.
Do you like Aivazovsky?
Their morgue is around the corner.
That small window there,
is that the morgue?
Violetta, do you like Aivazovsky?
He painted the sea.
The morgue is fine:
so cool in there.
Ours is a rather old morgue.
I went there today
in connection with our patient.
A young man.
I'm so fed up with
this business,
so during the dissection
I watched his face.
When they cut him,
his face was wrinkled
as though he couldn't bear it.
But after they stitched him up,
his face turned smooth
as though he was relieved.
Actually, the pathologist woman
was very good.
She does her job masterfully.
She's stronger than any man.
And she does it so adroitly.
Oddly enough, such a beauty
does that job.
Everyone loves watching her.
Sasha, you're as dumb about this
as a horse cloth.
Sasha, rein back a bit,
you're very dense in this matter.
Yes, I saw it:
the horses were all decorated,
they jumped over fire
for some reason.
Our steeplechase
includes ten "dead" hurdles.
The ditch is very deep.
It's called an "open ditch".
An open ditch?
An ear then mound is called "a bank".
It's called a bank.
- What? Picnic? Briquette?
- Bank.
There were three of us, friends,
when I was studying.
Three girlfriends.
Myself, Rita Gothier,
and my present colleague.
Rita Gothier...
We adored her, but she
vanished from our life.
And my colleague and I
got jobs here.
Rita reappeared in our life
when she got
into my hospital ward.
Her health kept deteriorating and
she'd been seeing dreadful dreams,
as though her relatives urged her
to lie down in a coffin.
I visited her
during my shift.
I would take her hand
and listen to her complaining:
"My fever wouldn't subside..."
I anticipated something bad
but not that soon.
Once at a briefing,
I heard it said:
"Lilya's friend, Margarita Gothier,
died last night."
And all turned to face me,
making a lot of noise.
Indeed, Rita had a beautiful