Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром! The Irony of Fate is a Russian classic.
The key to the plot is the relative uniformity of Russian public architecture right down to the door key of each apartment regardless of which town it's in.
(here are a couple of my own photos of Russian public housing from one of my visits there)
Following their annual tradition, a group of friends meet at a banya in Moscow to celebrate New Year's Eve (Новогодняя Ночь).
They get very drunk toasting the upcoming marriage of Zhenya to Galya. After the bath, one of the friends, Pavlik, has to catch a plane to Leningrad, Zhenya, in his turn, is supposed to go home to celebrate New Year's Eve with his fiancee. Both Zhenya and Pavlik pass out. The others cannot remember which of their unconscious friends is supposed to be catching the plane; eventually they mistakenly decide that it is Zhenya and put him on a plane instead of Pavlik.
Zhenya wakes up in Leningrad airport, believing he is still in Moscow. He stumbles into a taxi and, still quite drunk, gives the driver his address. It turns out that in Leningrad there is a street with the same name (3rd Builders' street), with a building at his address which looks exactly like Zhenya's. The key fits in the door of the apartment with the same number as his. Inside, even the furniture and layout of the apartment is nearly identical to that of Zhenya's apartment. Zhenya is too drunk to notice the differences, and goes to sleep.
Later, the real tenant, Nadya, arrives home to find the strange man sleeping in her bed. To make matters worse, Nadya's fiancé Ippolit arrives before Nadya can convince Zhenya to get up and leave. Ippolit becomes furious, refuses to believe Zhenya's and Nadya's explanations and storms out.
Zhenya desperately tries to get back to Moscow and Nadya herself wants to get rid of him as soon as possible, but unfortunately there are no flights to Moscow until the next morning.
Thus the two are compelled to spend New Year's Eve together. At first they continue to treat each other with animosity, but gradually their behaviour softens and the two fall in love.
In the morning, they feel that everything that has happened to them was a delusion, and they make a difficult decision to part. With a heavy heart, Zhenya returns to Moscow. Meanwhile Nadya reconsiders everything and, deciding that she might have let her chance at happiness slip away, takes a plane to Moscow following Zhenya, easily finding him in Moscow, since their addresses are the same.
I first saw this at a Russian language class I was at, and needless to say my preconceptions weren't exactly positive but 15 mins in I was hooked and it's an absolute favourite of mine so much so that I had to get a copy for myself. If you get a chance to see this grab it. Russian cinema has as long a history as that in the West and it shows in the quality of the films they produce. There are so many wonderful actors too whose work might never be seen because of the language barrier - such a pity. как жаль !
