This is a poetic film set in the times of Lenin's NEP. A ballet dancer steals a brooch and gives it as a present to another dancer. This is a crime of passion. A mysterious black ball is after the heroine. She runs away from it and manages to give the brooch in an exquisite pirouette movement, as shiny as diamond facets. What gives a stone its dazzling luster are its polished facets. But the real gem is love, and it's much harder to get than any diamond in the world.
Imagine a mix of Repo Man, Oliver! and Pinocchio and you're on the road to grasping the tone of this bizarre Estonian take on Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy's character Buratino, a wooden boy (or boyus woodenus, as the doctors in the film refer to him). Buratino's virginal mother wishes upon a star for a son and is immediately answered by what can only be called a rape-splinter. The woman gives birth almost immediately to her little wooden Buratino.
A story about an orphan boy, abandoned by his family. He was raised by his kind adopted mother, and was sold by his adopted father in hardship to a traveling man who eventually, became his teacher and a father-figure. With his teacher, he learned to play music and perform on the street with 3 intelligent dogs and a monkey. He traveled through the towns of France, and through life twist and turn, eventually, lead to the ultimate search for his real family.