This time it wasn’t a voice that gave her away, as in the case of Andrei Myagkov (3rd from the left). It was the way of holding her jaw, with mouth slightly open — facial mannerisms that made her seem like a tough hombre. After wondering about it a couple of days, I finally recalled where I had seen her before.

It was in another Eldar Ryazanov film with a similar name — an earlier one: Office Romance. And Myagkov was in that one, too.

Her name is Alisa Freindlich. Her Wikipedia page didn’t list A Cruel Romance in the filmography section, so I added it.

Unfortunately, there is no Wikipedia page for the movie itself, and I wasn’t ambitious enough to start one. One step at a time.

Andrei Myagkov’s voice gives him away the moment he opens his mouth in this movie. I recognized him not by the way he looks, but by the way he talks. Same for Nikita Mikhalkov, though in his case I was expecting his appearance from what I read in the YouTube description. It wouldn’t have mattered. His voice gives him away.

It reminds me of how remarkable it was that Aleksandr Belyavsky could put on a such a different voice to play Leonid Brezhnev in Serye Volki.