The Long Farewell (1971) review

Single mother Yevgenia Vasilyevna Ustinova (Zinaida Sharko) is trying to take care of her son Sasha (Oleg Vladimirsky), but he's a hormonally charged teenager who gives her nothing but trouble, he's infatuated with young beauty Masha (Tatyana Mychko) and then threatens to leave so he can spend more time with his biological father who (apparently) abandoned them.  Some viewers seem to find the "core" of the film - about the tense relationship between a mom and her kid - to be touching, except one needs to look past all the other flaws, like the inability to introduce characters properly, becoming flaky and "artsy" every couple of minutes, the abundance of Bad Symbolism and the conversations that go nowhere.  I had similar complains with Muratova's 1967 Brief Encounters - a box set containing both movies was recently released by Criterion - so maybe her "approach" just doesn't work for me.