Komm zurück, Kleiner

It was not the first time Luigi Comencini had tackled childhood (and it would not be the last):"Incompreso" was very moving and unforgettable;"Pinocchio" was very different from Disney's cartoon;later in the eighties he would transfer to the screen,with great talent,De Amicis's "Cuore",then redo "Marcellino pan y vino".Comencini is THE poet of childhood ,whose reputation is much greater in France than in his native Italy.Here all the movies I mention above plus "lo Scopone Scientifico" and his "Casanova" are considered art house cinema .

Eugenio is a normal sensitive child.He's got a rather rich family but he is a burden for them.The child passes from hand to hand: the parents who both want to start over with another partner,the grandparents who are leaving for Australia ,the others who are chic mean bourgeois ... That a friend of the family leaves the boy alone in the country is actually what the family unconsciously wants to do!

While they are searching for the boy,all the flashbacks -Comencini displays less skill than he would do in "Cuore" however;besides his cast is weaker- show how selfish adults can become.In direct contrast to that ,the director introduces a working class family where the boy finds some comfort thanks to his pal,some kind of Italian Gavroche.

That the family should be more interested in the new-born calf than in an unfortunate child who slowly moves away as nobody notices it is not surprising and is still relevant in 2007 .As a teacher,I 've sometimes met this kind of child.They are well fed, wear smart clothes,own tons of toys ,so they should not be miserable.

Luigi Comencini died this year;it was a major loss for the Italian cinema.

Eugenio is a child who is abandoned in the middle of nowhere when supposedly driven from his grandparents to his father by a friend of the father, just because the friend got annoyed for no strong reason.

Much of the film shows scenes, as flashback, from Eugenio's life between his on/off half separated parents who value their work life more than each other or their son, his grandparents, and a friend of similar age. This is mixed with the "present", the search for the lost son.

The film portrays a dysfunctional family with parents for whom the child is a burden in the first place and who don't have much of a clue what to do with him. The film also focuses on how the son deals with all this.

It can also be watched as historical document showing the ambiguities of the ideas about family in 1980, partly influenced by traditional roles but also by the rebellion against them including feminism, creating a strong tension, with many focusing on self-fulfillment as a way out (the parents are actually portrayed as self-centered and seriously lacking orientation, but still they are ambivalent characters who have their occasional good moment). The generation of the grandparents, also shown, has its own issues (everything wasn't perfect in the old days either).

Overall this is quite credible and well done, funny at times with glimpses of attractive photography (as we can expect from Italian cinema). The topic is original and fascinating, so it's a good film, even though the mix of scenes and time jumps is occasionally a bit chaotic and unfocused.