Long Farewells is asubtle psychological characterization of the relationship between amother and her only son. Evgenia (Zinaida Sarko) is a kind of JeanneDielman of Odessa; since the departure of her husband, her hard-workinglife revolves around caring for her son Sasha-caring for him, dominatinghim and keeping him a little child. When Sasha is sent on a summercamping trip with his father, accompanying him on an archaeologicalexpedition in the Caucasus Mountains, he returns home a new boy,resistant to his mother's adulations and ministrations. "Muratova tellsprivate, family stories," Soviet film critic Andrei Plakhov writes, "butdoes so with such emotion and humanity that the intellectual dimensionof these films goes far beyond that."