I would not compare this movie with "Ironiya Sudby". Rather, it looks very much like "Odinokaya zhenshchina zhelayet poznakomitsya" (1986), with the same actress (Irina Kupchenko) playing a similar part 15 years later (and she does look as good in 2001 as she did in 1986).
Like in "Odinokaya zhenshchina" the heroine is a lonely woman taking non-traditional steps and some risks to find a man. There she did it for herself, here she is doing it and more for her "dying" mother who desperately wants to see her daughter to have a family of her own. Well, being older, she takes bolder steps and greater risks.
Now, after the episode with jewelries you should either stop watching the movie in disgust, or re-adjust your understanding of it. Because it is not a more or less realistic story based on common sense like "Odinokaya zhenshchina", but a fantasy based on some noble and naïve ideas of people's response to kindness and good people finding and keeping each other.
If you accept this transformation from realism to fantasy, you can leisurely enjoy theatrical atmosphere the actors provide (the movie is an adaptation of a play), the point the movie is trying to make, and the inevitable "feel good" finale.
Like in "Odinokaya zhenshchina" the heroine is a lonely woman taking non-traditional steps and some risks to find a man. There she did it for herself, here she is doing it and more for her "dying" mother who desperately wants to see her daughter to have a family of her own. Well, being older, she takes bolder steps and greater risks.
Now, after the episode with jewelries you should either stop watching the movie in disgust, or re-adjust your understanding of it. Because it is not a more or less realistic story based on common sense like "Odinokaya zhenshchina", but a fantasy based on some noble and naïve ideas of people's response to kindness and good people finding and keeping each other.
If you accept this transformation from realism to fantasy, you can leisurely enjoy theatrical atmosphere the actors provide (the movie is an adaptation of a play), the point the movie is trying to make, and the inevitable "feel good" finale.