By PETER CALDER
(Herald rating: * * * * )
The source novel for this excellent Italian film, which is part coming-of-age story and part thriller, was rooted in the political kidnappings that hogged the headlines in the 1970s.
But scrupulously adopting the point of view of its youthful protagonist, the film is
predominantly an unsettling depiction of the loss of innocence that happens in the moment a child learns about adult business.
The director is the man behind one of the slightest pictures to win the Oscar for best foreign film, 1991's cloying, sunlit Mediterraneo. The isolated region of southern Italy which is this film's setting is lavished with sunshine, too, but it's what's in the shadows that counts. Salvatores says as much with his opening shot which starts in a hole in the ground before taking us up into the countryside where 9-year-old Michele (Cristiano) plays with his mates.
The film cleverly hints at the drama to follow and undercuts the effect of the idyllic surroundings by showing the kids' games as treacherous and cruel, full of the casual betrayal that will be so crucial at the film's climax. But the tempo quickens when Michele stumbles on a pit where a boy of about his own age is a chained prisoner.
Michele befriends the boy, Filippo (di Pierro), and steals food to take to him. He says nothing of his discovery, and the movie is sensitive to the complicated mix of reasons he might keep quiet.
But, slowly, it dawns on him that he is not the only one who knows about the captive and he has his first, profoundly unsettling glimpse of the grown-up world.
Salvatores makes sure we're always looking through Michele's eyes - he mounts his camera at kid's-eye height and, because we never know more than the boy, his surprises are ours. It's an extraordinarily effective approach, and Salvatores' visual style, which unerringly finds the threatening detail in the beautiful first impression, matches the story perfectly.
It stutters slightly in the last minutes but not enough to undermine it as one of the movies' most affecting stories of childhood's end.
CAST: Giuseppe Cristiano, Mattia Di Pierro, Giulia Matturro, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Dino Abbrescia
DIRECTOR: Gabriele Salvatores
RUNNING TIME: 101 mins
RATING: M (content may disturb)
SCREENING: Rialto
