Another star performance for Nina Ruslanova in what is in many ways an inversion of Brief Encounters (1967), here being the target of two men’s attentions. While in the prior film, Ruslanova’s character ultimately opts to emphatically forego heterosexual love and retire to a women’s commune, the conclusion Muratova sets up for her in Getting To Know the Big Wide World is incomplete to some degree, and perhaps ideally so.
Playing out on a construction site, Muratova’s narrative charts a…