Admit One

Synopsis: A 6 year old Russian orphan about to be adopted by a rich Italian family escapes the orphanage and sets out on a search for his biological mother.

Technical Details

Title The Italian (Italianetz) Country Russia Genre Drama Language Russian Director Andrei Kravchuk Cast Kolya Spiridonov, Mariya Kuznetsova Year 2005     My Rating More Info IMDB Buy Amazon

Review

The Italian tells the story of Vanya, a 6 year old Russian orphan living in a precarious orphanage and about to be adopted by a rich Italian couple. While he is waiting at the orphanage for the adoption to be completed, a mother comes hoping to recover the biological son she gave up years before, only to find he has already been adopted. Vanya becomes worried that the same thing could happen to him after he leaves the country, so with the help of an older orphan girl he escapes the orphanage and sets out to find his birth mother. The despicable adoption facilitator does not want to lose the good sum of money the Italians are paying to adopt Vanya, so she will orchestrate a chase to capture the fugitive boy, bribing police and anyone else who may help to find him.

This is an interesting film that provides an insight into the lives of orphans in poor countries. One can only imagine what it would be for these kids to grow up in institutions, unloved and sometimes without even their basic needs covered. The orphanage depicted in this movie falls in the worst category, it’s run more as a business than anything else. Now international adoptions are better regulated by governments so hopefully there aren’t too many of those left. The story keeps the viewer interested all the way to the end, the journey of Vanya to find his biological mother is well developed, he runs into a lot of the issues one can expect a 6 year old traveling alone may find along the way. One big omission is the subject of why Vanya’s mother gave him up to an orphanage, the movie makes no effort in explaining this. My other problem with this film is that at some point it appears as if the director got tired and decided to end the story abruptly, with Vanya narrating the conclusion in a voice over. I would have expected an ending that has a comparable narrative style to the rest of the movie.

©2008 by Miguel Grinberg

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