Parental Guidance Required

Illawarra Mercury

Thursday July 19, 2007

JIM SCHEMBRI THE AGE

THE ITALIAN (M)

Stars: Kolya Spiridonov, Maria Kuznetsova, Yuri Itskov

Director: Andrei Kravchuk

*** 1/2

Screening: Gala Warrawong

When it comes to the cinematic portrayal of abject misery, it's hard to beat the Russians.

This is especially the case when it comes to children. Russian film-makers seem to have a powerful belief that children are essentially adults in miniature and so deserve the full brunt and grind of the emotional turmoil usually spared those kids who populate films from the West.

The young lad we are presented with in Kravchuk's The Italian offers a piercing portrait of loss, dejection and emotional displacement. The narrative is propelled by a sense of hope, which thankfully keeps the enterprise from being unremittingly bleak.

Vanya (Spiridonov) is a six-year-old inmate of the kind of orphanage your parents threatened to send you to if you didn't eat your vegetables.

The place is situated in the middle of the snow-blasted countryside and run by a corpulent woman called Madam (Kuznetsova), a corrupt official who likes matching the unfortunate children in her care with desperate couples from Europe who have a lot of money and no children.

One such couple from Italy comes to visit and takes an instant liking to Vanya, who is told by older inmates to seize this chance for a better life. Some of the orphans have been stuck there so long they are teenagers, with one girl working as a prostitute in the town.

An incident involving a mother in search of the child she abandoned, however, gets Vanya thinking of tracking down his own mother. After an overlong sequence in which he learns to read so he can pilfer his file and find out her address, Vanya takes off, with Madam and her chief henchman (Itskov) in hot pursuit.

Director Kravchuk and screenwriter Andrei Romanov spare Vanya no hardship on his gruelling journey. He is threatened, beaten, abused, chased by adults and other "lost" children and even injures himself with a broken bottle to evade capture.

The unceasing cascade of travails do have a cumulative effect so that by the final reel you find yourself hoping that the child will find some form of peace where he can at least sample what normal childhood is like.

Amid its mordant themes and harsh tone, the film does allow in bursts of humour, humanity and happiness, which shine all the brighter for the ordeal the film-makers have subjected us to.

© 2007 Illawarra Mercury

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