Summary
Pavel Simov is a clerk whose gambling addiction functions as a wrecking ball for his family. After losing everything, he pivots to violent theft, framing his wife Rinka for a crime that sends her to prison while he vanishes abroad. The narrative tracks Rinka’s post-prison struggle to find their son, Pepi, who has been bounced between foster care and a bakery where he is essentially a child laborer. A series of highly convenient coincidences—centered around a small neck cross—reunites mother and son, only for the villainous Pavel to return and attempt to burn their lives down a second time. The film concludes with a dramatic near-death encounter on a railway and a heavy-handed religious conversion that attempts to scrub away years of domestic abuse and neglect.
Synopsis
The clerk Pavel Simov is a compulsive gambler. His last savings are lost gambling and he begins to steal. He attacks a rich woman in the park, grabs her bag and coat and runs away. The police chase him. He leaves the stolen items with his wife Rinka. She cannot prove her innocence and is sentenced as his accomplice. The greengrocer Katerina takes in their three-old-year son Pepi but later sends him to a manger on Rinka insistence. Katerina puts on his neck a small cross left by his mother. Three years later Rinka is released from prison. At the manger, she learns that the child has been given to a foster mother. Hungry, Rinka stops in front of Zoya's bakery. A boy of about six works there. He takes pity on the beggar-woman and gives her two buns for which Zoya gives him a beating. Rinka starts work in a sweet factory. One evening she finds a child sleeping in front of her house and recognizes the boy from the bakery. She is full of joy when she discovers her own cross hanging around his neck. The child remains with his mother. Simov appears soon, after years abroad. He begins to blackmail his wife. One day, when Rinka refuses to give him money, he knocks her over the burning primus. A fire burst out. Simov flees, dragging Pepi behind. Simov drops on the railway track. Pepi manages to pull him aside seconds before a train passes. Simov repents and gives himself up to police. In jail, a priest takes care of him. He succeeds in transforming Pavel Simov. He returns to his family. Rinka reveals to Pepi that he is his father. The child implores her to forgive him and let him live with them.
