Frontromanze

Bubbling out of the Ruskie archive (that's the way they financed NIGHT WATCH) comes this draggy eighties film with in washed out Commie-color, with Panfilov's great Inna Churikova registering in third billing.

The idea has promise. On the WW2 front, death and destruction is always near and a soldier notices that his officer has two things in the dug out that make his life more interesting - music and a woman. Despite being warned off, he presents the girl a scraggy flower before they go off to likely death.

Years later in the city streets, he recognizes her laugh and finds she has become an abrasive single mother street peddler. Half out of sympathy and half out of infatuation, he tries to improve her life, with wife Inna understandably non-plussed.

There are plenty of nice moments and the picture of eighties Russian life is a plus but the piece lacks structure and discipline and attention wanders.