A high school student lives with his mother, an honest Soviet worker in an ordinary communal apartment. Her boyfriend, who is engaged in small-scale commercial adventures, introduces the guy to a spirited, intelligent girl, who opens up to him a whole world of beautiful, great, but persecuted literature - the poets of the Silver Age. The atmosphere thickens...
Lena, a woman in her late twenties, loves her boyfriend, but in time comes to see that their relationship serves no useful function. What's more, she sees that her friends are for the most part empty-headed lackeys, causing her to wonder just what is the point of her life.