As she clears the greasy tables, the audience realizes that this is Masha's reality, this plain, drab 1993 existence in the canteen is her true waking life. Back in the kitchen, the canteen owner awkwardly asks if she would like to come with him to visit an old dacha he's bought out in the country. After a pause, Masha says yes. They drive through the gray city, past the row after row of decaying factories, to the dacha. It's immense, and almost totally ruined.
Thick weeds surround the burned out, crumbling structure.
As Mashsa and the canteen owner walk through the building he tells her of his dreams of rebuilding it, fixing the roof, repainting the walls, clearing the grounds. Masha wanders into what used to be a grand living room and sees on the floor an old, faded portrait, of a Countess. The face she sees is her own. But, the film reminds us, the Tsarist era suffered from a moral prudishness that severely inhibited free expression, especially sexual expression. The Russia of 1993, if nothing else, is wide open to sponteneity and bawdy fun.