I don’t know how The Italian, a 2005 Russian movie directed by Andrey Kravchuk, got on my list. Likely I was mislead by the title, but I’m certainly glad to have seen it. The acting throughout is very good. The young lead, Nikolai Spiridonov, who plays the 6 year old, tough, sweet, resourceful Vanya, is very very good; amazing. We believe we are seeing a real run-down Russian orphanage, the erratic tenderness and cruelty of its Direktor [Yuriy Itskov], and the alpha-female entrepreneurial determination of Madam [Mariya Kuznetsova] as she arranges adoptions to foreigners of the cutest boys. The sub-society within the orphanage, run by an often menacing teenager, Kolyan [Denis Moiseenko], is eye opening. He rules the roost with tough-boy measures, but is not unconcerned about young Vanya, telling him not to be a fool by turning down a chance to change his life in Italy.
The film opens in a closed car crawling through a Russian winter landscape. Interior shots through fogged up car windows, and exterior panoramas put us there. Out of gas, the car stalls on a muddy road and an Italian man gets out, opens his arms wide and exclaims “This is the real Russia!” Too true, as the Madam calls the orphanage for help and twenty some boys, under 15, come out to push the car the rest of the way. The kids all know who the Madam is and envy those who might be adopted by wealthy foreigners. One hopeful lad puts on his best shirt to impress and is brushed aside for the winsome Vanya. The Italian couple love him and set in motion, including money exchanged, the adoption. Envied by all, he gets the nickname “The Italian.” Vanya, however is not so sure.
His best friend had recently been adopted. A few days after Vanya’s stroke of fortune, the boy’s birth mother arrives at the door begging to see her son. She is abused for abandoning him and for her drunkenness and is driven off. Vanya hears stories in bed about adoptees being sold for body parts. He worries that if he goes to Italy his own mother might arrive and never find him. After a chance conversation with the sorrowful mother and subsequent news of her death, Vanya, realizing that his own mother might be suffering at his absence and might be searching for him, decides he must find her, wealthy Italians or not. To begin, he has to learn to read. Hidden away in the direktor‘s office is his file, with clues as to his origins and possibly here whereabouts. He wins the help of one of the teenage girls by showing he has memorized the alphabet, persisting after a couple of failures, showing him and us his determination.
Much of the movie is the journey to find his mother, depending on his own quick wits, the kindness of strangers, fast legs and his new power of reading. Some of the most catching scenes are of him, making his way through unknown streets and paths, clutching his over-sized book. There are good details of passengers and the passing villages, tiny open-air markets with one-stool vendors of roasted potatoes or used jackets and hats. Frame after frame catch his mobile face, staring out on the becoming-spring landscape, sizing up the helpfulness, or not, of passing adults. We see him in near tears, having been beaten by other abandoned boys, and in ferocious battle with a potential captor — none of it maudlin, all of it emotional. Here’s a kid so frail and vulnerable to look at and so determined and resilient in action, we’d all like to give him a hand.
The ending is a promise of happiness, without being saccharine. In fact, you’ll scratch your head for a moment until the pieces fall into place.
For a studious review of The Italian, placing it in the history and tension of Russia entering its capitalist era see here at KinoKultura...probably more interesting after a first viewing of the movie.
Neither the director, Andrey Kravchuk, nor the writer, Andrei Romanov, are widely recognized outside of Russia. The Italian won multiple awards at smaller film festivals, though winning a special mention in the Crystal Bear category at the Berlin 2005 festival. Kravchuk has another movie, of a much different genre, which I’d like to see when it becomes available. The Admiral, 2008, is bio-pic of one of Russia’s great admirals who joined the Whites in the 1917-1922 civil war. It is billed as an epic historical film with a strong love-story and has broken box-office records in Russia while adding to the fire between those who look back with nostalgia at the Bolsheviks and those who reserve their nostalgia for the resistance against them.