The elderly yet energetic Valentina Nrovka is summoned by the Hermitage Art Museum in Leningrad to confirm the authenticity of a painting – The Bay of Nice - attributed to the famous artist (and her old art teacher) Matisse. Her nervous daughter Sophia Yepileva accompanies her to the museum, and uses the outing to speak seriously with her mother. Overcoming her self-effacing manner, Yepileva confesses that she wishes to leave her husband Grigor and marry an ambitionless but kind older man, Peter Linitsky. Remembering her past as a selfish bohemian art student in Paris, Nrovka attempts to convince Yepileva that she shouldn’t drastically change her life in search of indulgence, freedom, and self-actualization. Nrovka explains that Yepileva would ruin her husband’s influence as a member of the Party through divorce, and likely, Yepileva would not feel complete by marrying this boring man twice her age and socially beneath her. Eventually, however, Nrovka relents and agrees to financially support her daughter, and reveals to the Assitant Curator that the painting is, in fact, a Matisse.
