Sergey, Oleg Dal, a successful Moscow doctor living in a stable common-law arrangement, returns to his rural hometown tucked inside a quiet nature reserve. The visit is ostensibly a routine check-in with his mother and stepfather, Lyubov Dobrzhanskaya as Ekaterina Andreevna and Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy as Ivan Modestovich, yet the real motive soon becomes clear beneath the surface of small-town rhythms.
Nearby, a young woman named Varya, Vera Glagoleva, has sent a telegram announcing she is pregnant and that Sergey is the one she expects to support. The news lands with a heavy, personal weight, because Sergey is torn between the duty he owes to his unborn child and the life he has built with his glamorous singer wife. The dilemma weighs on him as he weighs what it would mean to stay, to stay committed to the life he leads in Moscow, and what it would mean to acknowledge Varya’s plea for responsibility in a situation that could alter multiple lives.
In the midst of this tension, Sergey’s sense of responsibility clashes with his reluctance to abandon the life he’s chosen. The conflict intensifies when he acts on impulse and shoots a tame deer that his mother had cared for, violating the nature reserve’s strict hunting ban. The act scars Ekaterina, who had hoped for a calmer, more measured approach to the situation and who now finds her warnings met with silence and evasion.
Ekaterina’s distress deepens as she confronts Sergey’s calm dismissal of the fears surrounding Varya’s possible despair. Her heart breaks as she begs him to see the risks and the consequences of denying what is right in front of them. The rift between mother and son widens, and the forest around them seems to echo their fracture with its cold, isolating expanse.
Heartbreak leads Ekaterina to wander into the forest, where she collapses under the weight of worry and sorrow. Varya discovers her in danger, rushes to call Sergey, and does what she can to bring him back to the moment of need. But Sergey arrives too late to change the outcome, and the day in his homeland closes on a note of tragic consequence rather than reconciliation.
The final image lingers on Sergey standing alone on the balcony of his Moscow apartment, a solitary figure haunted by the choices he has made. The film turns a quiet, unflinching gaze on guilt, duty, and the high cost of keeping love and obligation in tension with one another, leaving viewers to ponder the price of avoidance and the weight of responsibility in the face of unavoidable truth.
