Adorável Pivellina

A little girl is found in a park by a woman from a small circus in Italy. She and her family and friends try to take care of the child as best they can waiting for her mother to come for her. What I like most about this movie is how this group of people find a way to give her not only food and clothing but the love she needs. The end wasn't a surprise but leaves the audience guessing about what happened next. I very much enjoy foreign movies and am adding this one to my list.

There are popular films for mainstream audiences which suit those with short attention span needs and there are the gems that inspire and engage the filmophile looking for character driven films with a quality of real life acting (usually foreign directors). This is a beautiful film. How these directors ever managed to shoot this film is beyond me. They captured the behavior of this little child so wonderfully. Its a real study of an intimate lifestyle somewhere in the outskirts of Rome during a typical winter, an emotional story of people on the margins of society and how they rescue and then bond with this little girl. Its a treasure of a film and your heart and soul will be uplifted by the story and the nature of the screenplay. The ending is really poignant. It won awards at Cannes and quite rightly so. Its hard to get it on DVD as the directors preferred to have it shown at festivals. Simply adorable. I cant think of any aspect that fails to engage the viewer.

One fine day a woman is walking through a park, calling out for her missing dog. She's about to give up and go home without the dog when she spots a 2 year old girl, left alone. Being a responsible person she takes the kid home to her trailer so she stays warm while she and her husband search for the kids parents.

And so starts a warm loving tale where two people that have little to share do the right thing and share anyway - just because they can and just because they know they have to. The way they take the kid into their lives and go on with their ways and try to incorporate her into that pattern is just heart warming. The film rolls on like a slow wave and keeps on going steadily for the whole length of it. The characters are played out entirely believable and they make everything fit together.

At the end of it you can only feel love for the couple and hope for the best - at whatever cost. It feels right, it is right. So, all in all, a feel good film with a good solid hint of tragedy and even a small bit of tension, very nicely played, amazingly set and completely lovable.

9 out of 10 right choices

Italy has long been a country for producing small films about everyday people,and 'La Pivellina' is no exception. A middle aged woman,once a dashing figure in the Circus world is out looking for her dog,when she comes upon an abandoned two year old girl,Asia,sitting on the swing. Patty asks where her mother is,and Asia has no answer. Patty decides to look for both her dog,as well as Asia's (alleged)mother. Patty decides to take little Asia back to the trailer where she & her husband,Walter live. Walter isn't exactly happy to have the toddler in tow (fearing police intervention),but agrees to let Asia stay,at least until Asia's mother turns up. When the mother shows no sign of coming back to get her daughter,the couple take care of little Asia (and end up bonding with her). With the help of a next door neighbour,Tairo,a 14 year old boy,they try to make an existence for the little girl. Will Asia's mother ever show up to reclaim Asia? This is a little film with a big heart that will work it's way to your heart. Documentary film makers, Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimme co direct this little charmer of a film from a screen play written by Tizza Covi (who also acts as producer & editor),with cinematography by Rainer Frimme (who makes very good use of hand held camera work,as well as co producer,too). The cast includes Patrizia Gerardi as Patty,Walter Saabel as Walter,Tairo Caroli as Tairo,and Asia Crippa as Asia. At long last,a film dealing with children that doesn't paint children as smart mouthed,snotty little punks that seem to know more than adults (Tairo actually looks up to Patty & Walter with genuine respect & admiration,and not as a couple of farty old fogies one would expect from your typical garden variety situation comedy). A film that is well worth seeking out for thinking persons who are sick to death of all of those predictable made for TV looking (so called)comedies. Spoken in Italian with English subtitles. Not rated by the MPAA,this film contains some outbursts of rude language,and an unpleasant scene of animal abuse.

I really enjoyed this film, which I watched on Netflix, despite the crude cinematography (there are about ten long sequences of people's backs as they walk through parks, housing developments, streets, woods). Small children aren't allowed to act for more than five minutes at a time in the U.S. (child labor laws, though I'm probably exaggerating) and watching this baby acquire language among poor but delightful people was simply charming. But beware that the film is its own pleasure in the Zen sense, and I feel that that was a bad decision. A dark fear hangs over it and the viewer is owed an ending. We go through a lot with these people and find out more about the 14-year-old son and how he reacted to the divorce at the end -- but the film wasn't about him. Why don't we learn who the toddler's mother was and why she left? Come on. Show that you can finish a story.