The Italian
B
The first scenes of The Italian show an SUV packed with an Italian couple, an adoption broker and her driver clunking along long stretches of cold slushy nothingness. We are in rural Russia. The car soon stalls. Correction, it is rural post-Soviet Russia and everything is collapsing. The only things Russia is overflowing with these days are booze and orphans. When one child is adopted by a foreign couple, a pair of orphans remark that “the director drank for a week.” Still it is in these illegal adoptions by rich foreign couples that most children see their salvation.
The Italian is in many ways a rebuke to a state failing its younger generation. Where Italy is a place to eat oranges in the sun, Russia is fast becoming a wasteland. Yet it is in this backdrop that six year old Vanya dumps the kind Italian couple looking to adopt him to go in search of the mother who abandoned him. Vanya’s change of heart is prompted by a distraught mother who comes to the orphanage looking for her son only to discover he has already been adopted. In Anna Karenina like fashion she hurls herself in front of a moving train.
The rest of the film follows Vanya as he valiantly tries to realize his quest. He learns to read, breaks into his personal files, steps out into the grimy streets of Russia where he outwits child muggers and dodges Madam, the adoption broker, and her sidekick driver cum lover who are in rabid pursuit. After all, they stand to lose a lot of money if they don’t recover him.
Andrei Kravchuk, the director, has made a film that is quasi documentary, quasi Dickensian, and all fairytale. The scenes are achingly real in their depiction of the seedy underbelly of Russian orphanages – the emotional and physical privations, the shady business dealings, and the micro society of Artful Dodgers formed by a rag tag bunch of urchins. The cast, a mix of actual orphans and actors, is impeccable. And Kolya Spiridonov puts forth a heart rendingly natural performance. Where the Italian falters is in its story, its failure to recognize that most Vanyas will not find their mothers waiting or able to scoop them up in their loving arms. The villains in this film, as mercenary as they are, believe their actions are in Vanya’s best interests, that the best thing for him and for the other children would be foreign adoption. A sentiment many of the other orphans share. However, we are meant to cheer on Vanya. But it is difficult to forget that the success of his quest may put the orphanage in disrepute making it all the more difficult for the other orphans to find homes. Despite these logical gaps the poignancy and vulnerability of a child searching for his mother still has a certain primordial ring.
B
The first scenes of The Italian show an SUV packed with an Italian couple, an adoption broker and her driver clunking along long stretches of cold slushy nothingness. We are in rural Russia. The car soon stalls. Correction, it is rural post-Soviet Russia and everything is collapsing. The only things Russia is overflowing with these days are booze and orphans. When one child is adopted by a foreign couple, a pair of orphans remark that “the director drank for a week.” Still it is in these illegal adoptions by rich foreign couples that most children see their salvation.
The Italian is in many ways a rebuke to a state failing its younger generation. Where Italy is a place to eat oranges in the sun, Russia is fast becoming a wasteland. Yet it is in this backdrop that six year old Vanya dumps the kind Italian couple looking to adopt him to go in search of the mother who abandoned him. Vanya’s change of heart is prompted by a distraught mother who comes to the orphanage looking for her son only to discover he has already been adopted. In Anna Karenina like fashion she hurls herself in front of a moving train.
The rest of the film follows Vanya as he valiantly tries to realize his quest. He learns to read, breaks into his personal files, steps out into the grimy streets of Russia where he outwits child muggers and dodges Madam, the adoption broker, and her sidekick driver cum lover who are in rabid pursuit. After all, they stand to lose a lot of money if they don’t recover him.
Andrei Kravchuk, the director, has made a film that is quasi documentary, quasi Dickensian, and all fairytale. The scenes are achingly real in their depiction of the seedy underbelly of Russian orphanages – the emotional and physical privations, the shady business dealings, and the micro society of Artful Dodgers formed by a rag tag bunch of urchins. The cast, a mix of actual orphans and actors, is impeccable. And Kolya Spiridonov puts forth a heart rendingly natural performance. Where the Italian falters is in its story, its failure to recognize that most Vanyas will not find their mothers waiting or able to scoop them up in their loving arms. The villains in this film, as mercenary as they are, believe their actions are in Vanya’s best interests, that the best thing for him and for the other children would be foreign adoption. A sentiment many of the other orphans share. However, we are meant to cheer on Vanya. But it is difficult to forget that the success of his quest may put the orphanage in disrepute making it all the more difficult for the other orphans to find homes. Despite these logical gaps the poignancy and vulnerability of a child searching for his mother still has a certain primordial ring.
