Known for Acting
In the interweaving of five stories, the New Year's magician himself ceases to believe in miracles, because burdened with life and immersed in work, people completely forget about the holiday. He takes serious action and sells his suit to a simple guy who has long since lost his sense of "New Year's magic". By leaving his position as a magician, Santa deprives people not only of a festive mood, but also of snow that could contribute to this. But contrary to his views on the hopelessness of the modern generation, people notice the changes and become the creators of a real New Year's miracle on their own.
The action begins at a meeting in a Voronezh hospital. Doctor Tatiana Bobrova is nervous - she needs to go home, but the head doctor won't let her go until all the issues are resolved. Finally, she manages to escape. Her husband, police captain Sergei Bobrov, who holds one of the key positions in the Internal Affairs Department, is waiting for her at home. He meets her with a stream of accusations, quickly drives himself into a frenzy and beats Tatiana, neatly bypassing her face and visible parts of her body. Tatiana got married three months ago, and two weeks ago had already suffered one beating. That time he apologized, swore that it would never happen again... Even then she had already considered running away, but did not have time to prepare properly. And now Tatiana decides to escape immediately.
Irina, a small-town nurse, has a heart defect. According to the doctors' prognosis, her heart has not much time left to beat, and there is no one to take care of her six-year-old daughter Anna. Irina feverishly tries to find a way out and she gets the idea that Anya could be brought up by her grandfather - the father of the young man who left Irina pregnant. All she knows about her daughter's grandfather, Igor Vasilyevich Kutepov, is that he is a rather successful businessman and 63 years old.
Misha and Sonia are left at home again without their parents, but this time with a nanny. Meanwhile, the bandits from the first film escape from the prison.
This film is about what the routine of everyday life can do to the human mind and psyche. It also reflects on the importance of the choices we make and how limited these choices are in the first place. The plot evolves around a family of four. They live in the suburbs, in a strange villa that appears, through a complex game of mirrors, to be more like a piece of installation art than a real house. The main character, who hardly appears on screen, is the son, a man in his thirties. Suffering from asthma and eczema since childhood, he uses his condition to manipulate his parents and his sister. Thus the existence of the terrorized family turns into an endless ritual of attempting to satisfy his whims, and always on the alert for yet another one of his “health crises”. Las Meninas resembles the scattered pieces of a puzzle. It is up to the viewer to assemble them in order to form his very own picture – something that makes the film itself personal and unique.
The businessman father did everything he could to set his son Savva on the right path. Nothing helped and would not have helped, perhaps, if it hadn't been for the glass. The glass in the window of a bank, broken by the Daddy in the heat of a quarrel with Savva, and as a consequence, an acquaintance with Svetlana, as well as a chain of further events...
