First Love

A moving portrait of adolescent adoration, from one of nineteenth century Russia's great storytellers.

A group of friends gathers for drinks one evening, and one of them asks if the others can recall the first time they fell in love. In response, Vladmimir Petrovich tells the story of Zinaida, the object of his 16-year-old infatuation. Zinaida is beautiful, sophisticated and impossibly out of his reach. This is a sensitive portrait not only of sexual awakening, but of what it means to realise the inadequacy of adults.