[2] Tanya Zaitseva from Leningrad, a nurse by day and a prostitute catering to foreigners by night, suddenly receives a marriage proposal from a Swedish client.

[3][4] Her closest friends in the trade, former volleyball athlete Sima Gulliver nicknamed Kisulya, a Baltic beauty, and the gorgeous Zina Meleiko, are considered the elite of prostitutes.

After another altercation with the police, she goes home to share good news with her mother, who thinks that her daughter is just a nurse.

Tanya does not hide the fact that she is not marrying for love, but because she wants to have an apartment, a car, money and dreams "to see the world with my own eyes."

She makes friends with a Russian truck driver working for "Sovtransavto", through whom she sends gifts to her mother in Leningrad.

[4][5] The drama of the final episode is reinforced by the Russian folk song "Tramp" ("In the wild steppes of Transbaikal ..."), which is the leitmotif of the film.

[6] The feature's main purpose was to demonstrate the Soviet audience how misleading was a hope for a "beautiful Western life".

[11][12] Described as the 'Cinderella with a darker twist', despite audience sympathy, the film received a lot of criticism, primarily for its pessimism and focus on the ugly side of life without really showing the hardships of the protagonist's reality.

[15] At the 1989 Tokyo International Film Festival, Intergirl won the Special Jury Prize with Yakovleva receiving the Best Actress Award.