The title refers to a Russian orphan, aged six, upon whom his fellow orphans confer the nickname "Italian" as soon as he is tabbed for adoption by a couple of that origin. During the waiting period prior to his departure for the sunny South, he, to the disbelief and dismay of everyone around him, becomes tortured by the thought that his birth-mother would never afterward be able to find him, resolves to track her down himself, and, in furtherance of that quest, learns how to read from a gold-hearted prostitute, all in less than two months. The film mines a vein of easy sentiment lying close to the surface and running shallow, and the kid (Kolya Spiridonov) is as cute as you can bear. Harder to do, and done to a turn by filmmaker Andrei Kravchuk, is the sketching-in of the workings of the orphanage (calling it "Dickensian," as some can't resist, would be an overstatement beyond even the reach of Dickens himself), the hierarchy of the staff, the cracked, rusted, run-down physical plant, and the bleak, snowy, foggy, isolated setting. These things afford solid footing beneath the slush. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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