
Film scholars have called this lyrical story “a director's work with two actors”. It tells of the unhappy love of two of our contemporaries and is built entirely on their fates and on the relationship of two characters, reflecting the mood of the heroes and of Baku itself. At first sight Asmar (Leyla Shikhlinskaya) seems happy: she has a diplomat husband, a daughter, friends and the fine impressions of interesting travels. Perhaps all this once amused her, but it has gradually lost its value, for Asmar — like some of our young people — still cannot find her place in life. Remembering the sincere feelings they had for one another in childhood, the woman and the man are no longer able to bring those feelings back. A comparison of past and future, of old and new; a love story that comes from the past and is presented as a search for “place”. Built from long flashbacks framed in a special way, this author's film also awakens a feeling of nostalgia, and it ends philosophically: one cannot live on the past and childhood memories alone, everyone must have a future. Having parted from Oktay (Hasan Mammadov), Asmar feels ever more strongly the wish to rebuild her life and to compromise. Showing a single day of a life — slightly unusual, yet little different from other days — the film ends with both Oktay and Asmar thinking hard and drawing conclusions. Its philosophical point is that a day that has passed cannot be brought back, and this runs through all of Asmar's actions and through the memories that continue throughout. Watching the film the audience waits for something, and so does Asmar — but by the end she feels that she and Oktay do not need one another. The past, naturally, remains the past.
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