这部电影采用的是“戏中戏”的结构，写一群人在电影院里看电影，电影中放映的是一个胖女人对她刚去世丈夫的悲痛追忆。她一生都被神经衰弱和忧郁症所折磨，当她无法面对残酷现实的痛苦时便以睡眠作为逃避方式，最后也死在沉睡之中。影片外的情节则是一个节目主持人面对电影观众在讨论苏联的电影历史和现状，但这群观众却个个心不在焉，一个个趁机开溜，最后只有一个睡着的观众和两排穿制服的士兵。
风格相当怪诞幽默，但有一丝悲凉苍茫的情绪渗入其中，呈现了一个严肃的苏联电影人对于苏联社会现状的思考：苏联人在面对无法解决的现实问题时竟然以睡觉作为躲避的手段，同时也提出了艺术电影在苏联缺乏知音和市场的现实无奈。

乡下姑娘纳迪娅搬到了城里，成了瓦莉亚公寓里的女佣。身为当地区委委员的 Valya 并不知道 Nadia 爱上了她目前不在身边的丈夫，一位名叫 Maksim 的地质学家。

Муратова сделала пародию на собственные прежние фильмы. Тут тебе и "Астенический синдром", и "Перемена участи", и "Три истории", чьим мрачным продолжением, кстати, и должны были стать "Второстепенные люди". Но режиссер умудрилась сделать так, чтобы жестокая агрессия и вялая апатия уступили место построенному ей уютному миру выморочного абсурда, который выглядит уютным и счастливым, и вход туда свободен для всех...

Michail helps out Nicolai and Lubia giving them a ride to a nearby construction site. They will work there to build a new town and factory.

”Kira Muratova, the grande dame of Eastern European cinema returns with her richest, most imposing vision of societal decay and personal efflorescence since The Aesthenic Syndrome encapsulated a very different moment in the former Soviet Union's history in 1989. Set largely in the vast central railway station of Kiev, a casino, a shopping arcade and the snow-blanketed streets between, Melody is a majestically realised pageant of the burgeoning new economy of inequality. Like Dickensian orphans or children in a fairytale, a motherless brother and sister arrive in the city and traipse through festive Christmas streets looking for their respective fathers…
The heedless adults who rush around them are endowed with varying blends of self-preoccupation, larceny, skepticism, boredom, gluttony, panic, but even at their most appalling these caricatures of urban insanity are disturbingly, sometimes even hilariously familiar. Muratova's vision of 21st-century decadence is thrilling in its ripe theatricality and self-conscious dramatic heft, yet its thunderous damnation could awaken the most jaded soul. This deeply unfashionable film is some kind of masterpiece.” – BG at tvnz.co.nz/new-zealand-international-film-festival/

Герои фильма «Кинопробы. Однокурсники» — мужчина и женщина, не встречавшиеся много лет. Вдруг оказавшись в командировке в ее городе, он решает зайти в гости — но не просто так, а чтобы с порога спросить совета: как поступить, если он любит сразу двух женщин?

Kira Muratova made this film under the pseudonym of Ivan Sidorov in 1983, but the official release came in 1988. Taken from the novel by Vladimir Korolenko, this somber drama tells of a judge who is devastated after the death of his wife and is neglectful of his children. His son befriends the children of a street beggar who live in an abandoned, derelict church. After his experience with is new friends, the young boy begins to feel sorry for his father and sympathizes with his loneliness.