Although her marriage still is a kind of servitude, Elena (Nadezhda Markina), a health-care worker, has at least escaped poverty in today's Russia by marrying her nouveau riche, aging boss. But she can't persuade him to spread his wealth to her blood family: an unemployed, beer-swilling son and an under-achieving grandson who appears destined for a lowly life in the army. As Elena grows desperate for cash to prop up her spoiled, lazy family, she seems like a Russian Mildred Pierce, aided by a pulsating "film noir" score from Philip Glass. And Andrei Zvyagintsev's film, a Special Jury Prize winner at Cannes 2011, becomes more than a domestic melodrama: a grim, effective allegory of the daily whirl in Putinland.
