Adorável Pivellina

I've heard from someone that this movie was a hidden gem. At the screening, the theatre was maybe about half full, probably not even. But there's definitely something about the movie that I simply cannot let go. The feeling lingers. The movie is actually not about the two-year old baby, but it's about the people who live in the trailers. There's no acute dramatic elements in this film but it leaves you with a subtle melancholy. The audience is exposed again and again to their substandard yet noble way of life and the presence of the two-year old baby merely accentuates it. The characters seem at ease with their trailer lives but what makes them really noble is that they do not want that kind of lives for the children. Their compassion is evident throughout the movie and that's what makes the movie so touching. The ending leaves you a little bewildered at first. But it does make sense because the movie is about the people who live in the trailer park and not really about the baby. The movie definitely goes slow but it's worth a watch.

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.

Just saw it at the Copenhagen PIX film festival 2010, and really felt it was a good slice of social realism in the style of Belgian filmmakers Dardenne brothers, but the style applies for other earlier directors as well.

The actors and the dialog in the movie is what really lifts this movie as it could really have ended as a failed movie without believable characters to make the story unfold. The child playing Asia/Aia also acts really well with the other characters.

The story is very simple but it doesn't need to be more complicated than it is. The movie worked well for me as it didn't fall into the usual clichés towards the ending as many other similar movies would have done.

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.

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.