“The Italian” is a Russian film, and the disconnect between title and source is entirely intentional. The little boy at the center of the film is dubbed “the Italian” by his fellow charges at a Russian children’s home, but the nickname is ironic.
The boy is six-year-old Vanya (Kolya Spiridonov), who is trotted out in the opening reel for inspection by a visiting Italian couple. They want to adopt a parentless Russian, and (it is implied) Vanya is the cutest kid in the home. In three months’ time, he’ll join his new family in Italy.
Well, maybe. In the meantime, Vanya becomes curious about his mother, who gave him up for adoption. What if she tries to locate him after he’s gone off to Italy?
What follows is Vanya’s ingenious plot to find his mother. First job: learn to read. Then he can find her file and maybe find an address.
The first half of the picture is set at the children’s home, which has its own social structure, black market and police force, all run by the older kids. The director, Andrei Kravchuk, creates a definitive world-within-a-world here, full of inviolable rules and adult gargoyles.
Rated: PG-13 rating is for subject matter Now showing: Metro
Appealing: A six-year-old Russian boy, on the verge of being adopted out of his children’s home, becomes determined to find his birth mother. This film has a sure sense of the world that children create within the controlled environment of the institution. (In Russian, with English subtitles.)
When Vanya finally exits the home, “The Italian” becomes a classic road movie. It can’t possibly be easy for Vanya to simply find his mother’s house, and it’s not – not with the adoption agent and her hapless henchman in pursuit.
The melodrama of that chase is perhaps a bit trumped up, but there’s no denying the vividness of the characters, or the intrinsic appeal of a kid trying desperately to find his mother.
It doesn’t hurt a bit that Kolya Spiridonov is an instantly appealing actor, even if he seems to have been chosen for the same reason the adoption service selected him to present to the Italian couple: He’s the cutest kid in the bunch.
“The Italian” takes a heartfelt look into the world of children, something the movies have a long tradition of doing. It’s not a children’s film, as it shows the more punishing aspects of Vanya’s life – the teenage girl who prostitutes herself to get money, for instance. Rather, it has the quality of a Russian fable, updated for modern times.
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