A hero of our time, the young bartender Vova Smorodin Mikhail Tarabukin is handed a pivotal task by his boss Gavrilych, the father of his fiancée Larisa, to open a small yet prestigious restaurant called “Paradise Corner.” He views this assignment as the first rung on his financial ladder and quickly learns to wield a magic touch for enterprise. If draining and repairing a basement is required, he even contemplates summoning an entire fire brigade or a company of soldiers to clear the way, convinced that any obstacle can be converted into an opportunity for success.
Taking over an empty attic as his makeshift office, Vova encounters three Bohemian artists who have escaped from a mental hospital: the suicidal model Dasha Katerina Ksenyeva, the alcoholic artist Gena Aleksey Devotchenko, and the mute Buddhist known as Khu-Pun’. This meeting becomes a turning point in Vova’s previously confident life. Realizing that these homeless artists could paint delectable food on the walls of his basement restaurant in exchange for room and board, he invites them to live in his attic. As he starts to exploit their work, he unknowingly drifts under their influence and steps into a wider world of spiritual values.
Gradually, Vova comes to understand that beauty is not measured by fashion, that love extends beyond physical relations, and that material wealth does not replace spiritual nourishment. The artist Gena, who was supposed to paint still lifes, becomes absorbed in creation and covers the basement walls with a wall-sized fresco of the Last Judgment—an assembly of hellish monsters and sinners. Vova is shaken, and he wonders how his boss Gavrilych and the waiters will react to such audacious art.
As curious tourists flock to the site, Vova grows convinced that the artist was right about a deeper dimension to life. The result is transformation: the basement becomes the cafe “Inferno” rather than “Paradise Corner.” Gavrilych’s inevitable response comes quickly; he arrives with a retinue of “Chaldeans” and tears down the murals, violently destroying the artists’ work. Vova tries to intervene and is cruelly beaten.
The second half of the film concentrates on Vova’s days spent in the attic with his new companions, who guide him toward a vegetarian diet and regular rooftop meditation. He begins to have vivid dreams where the past and future intertwine, hinting that his path might have been foretold and that his future actions—up to the moment of betrayal—were already mapped out. And so it unfolds: when faced with the pressures of a life stripped to asceticism, Vova ultimately ends the bond with his friends and leaves them vulnerable to Gavrilych’s retribution.
Returning to the familiar environment among the Chaldeans, Vova resumes his ascent in the restaurant world, pursuing success once more. Yet the image of white monkeys haunts him more and more, a stark reminder of his failed attempt to become a person of depth and of the betrayal toward those who had offered him a richer, more meaningful vision of life. The film lingers on this tension between material achievement and the pull of deeper spiritual values, painting a story of ambition, art, and the cost of choosing one over the other.
