The Italian is a modern-day fable.
It would be difficult for a film about the plight of a 6-year-old Russian orphan on a quest to find his missing mother not to pluck a few heartstrings.
The Italian
does just that, but fails to strum those strings in the harmonious unity that would elevate it to truly beautiful music. Still, it features a wonderful performance by a young actor
***image1***
and deals with a pressing moral affair: the global adoption market.
The Italian
begins at an orphanage where the plump, greedy and callous Cruella de Ville-type character referred to simply as "Madam" is finalizing the sale of 6-year-old Vanya to a wealthy Italian family. The kids busy themselves with petty crime organized by a teen mafia of passed-over orphans. When little Vanya learns that a previously adopted orphan's biological mother has thrown herself under a train after being unable to reconnect with her son, he begins a quest to find his birth mother before he is sent to Italy.
Warm, soft lighting adds to the Dickensian story to create the feeling of a fable and adds to the soft-hearted sentiment. Director Andrei Kravchuk employs tight, intimate shots that are often shaky to create an impression of peering into this child's life. The bleak Russian landscape is not excluded, but the true terrain of
The Italian
plays out on the able face of its young star, Kolya Spiridonov.
Unfortunately, the storyline is sloppy. Life is arbitrary and not everything can be tied together in a tidy bundle, but here we have not the randomness of existence, but rather
***image2***
the existence of randomness. The result is that even as the plot quickens, the emotional momentum, exquisitely built in the beginning, flounders.
What ultimately hampers
The Italian
is its psychologically simple characters. There is the prostitute with a heart of gold, the broken woman, the evil Madam, the hardened thugs and the kindly old man. The changes of heart come easily, as one cold Russian after another is thawed by Vanya's moving predicament. This character flatness causes the film's moral lessons to be simple and, therefore, naive, for it is from psychological complexity that moral complexity emerges.
Of course, that is what makes a fable a fable: simple, straightforward moral instruction.
