italianetz/the italian

This movie is wonderful. Possibly a tad slow for the average action movie fan, but I loved it. It's only playing in one theater in San Jose, and when we went on Sunday afternoon pretty much everybody else was in their 60's, at least. So now we know who has the patience for subtitles.
The film tells the story of a small orphaned Russian boy, who decides to go find his birthmother instead of getting to be adopted by an Italian family.

The film opens with a surprising amount of time spent showing life in the orphanage. We get a lot of the ins and outs of both kids' and grown ups' corruption, kids thin pale sholders, neglect, and lack of appropriate clothing. There is snow and sleet, tea and boiled potatos, and truck drivers picking up underaged girls.

Northern European poverty is not attractive. Women selling food at train stations are cold, their noses red, and they wear uninspiring and dirty jackets, hats, and mittens.

Women doing the same thing in Mexico could be put on posters. They would smile, their clothes would be colorful, and their images would attract tourists. The Russian women you want to forget you ever saw.

And that's why this movie upsets me so. It tells a compelling story about the lives and exploitation of unwanted children. But besides the human warmth that seeps through once in a rare while nothing will make people want to watch this movie. And that's too bad.