The Italian

It would require a Dickensian misanthrope of inhuman proportions to turn this particular cinematic waif from the door, writes Donald Clarke .

THE ITALIAN/ITALIANETZ

Directed by Andrei Kravchuk. Starring Kolya Spiridonov, Denis Moiseenko, Sasha Sirotkin, Andrei Yelizarov, Vladimir Shipov Club, IFI, Dublin, 99 min

***

The second feature from Andrei Kravchuk dresses itself in neorealist clobber, but at heart it remains a sentimental fairytale that, with the odd tweak here and there, might have provided Lionel Bart with the makings of a musical Less Kes than Whistle Down the Wind , The Italian nonetheless abounds with touching scenes and grounded performances.

Young Kolya Spiridonov, an actor with a stubborn capacity for stillness, plays Vanya, the least fatalistic inmate of a stark, under-funded Russian orphanage. The film begins with him meeting an Italian family who, once the paperwork has been cleared, intend to spirit him away to middle-class comfort.

It is to everybody's advantage that the adoption goes ahead. The weak-minded authorities have taken bribes from cynical middlemen; the other orphans fear that if snags develop their own chances of escape will be diminished and, of course, Vanya himself stands to go from scratchy blankets to Italian cotton.

Still, he is having second thoughts. When a distraught woman arrives at the institution to discover the child she abandoned has vanished, Vanya decides to flee and seek out his own mother.

Kravchuk points us towards any number of atrocities - childhood prostitution, endemic alcoholism - brewing amid the icy anarchy. Casting a sombre blue-grey shadow over the interiors, he invites the viewer to conclude that this part of Russia may have drifted too far from order ever to recover.

Yet, for all that, The Italian, assisted by that fine juvenile performance, somehow manages to end in an optimistic place. The deliberately ambiguous final shot might persuade even Uriah Heep to hope for the best.

© 2008 The Irish Times