This film tells a story of Boris Fishkin, a dancing student at Bolshoi Dance Academy in Moscow. He sincerely believes that his father is Mikhail Baryshnikov, the legendary Russian dancer. Fishkin never knew his real father and he doesn’t exactly get along with his peers at the academy. Katya who lives in Boris’s building expresses her affection for him but he has someone else in mind. One day, Baryshnikov comes into his life and Fishkin, a scrawny boy lacking selfconfidence, becomes so fascinated by his passionate movement that, he starts to believe that he also can become the legendary dancer. However his enthusiasm faces reality when his real father appears. The film reflects the social climate before Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika campaign of 1987. The Academy still has mandatory military training but Fishkin makes some ollars off foreigners. The film is set in a time period when people get on line to get food rations, but a pack of Marlboro American cigarettes can pay for meat in black market. This coming of age story crosses over between confusion in Fishkin’s life and that of asociety before opening its doors to Western methods and ideas. (LEE Sang-yong)