Six year-old Vanya is an adorable ragamuffin – young Master Spiridonov, in an unnervingly impressive performance from someone who has to stand on boxes to reach higher door-knobs – who lives with his equally prepossessing chums at a remote Russian orphanage. The state can’t give them funding but they get by on various black or grey market activities. One of the spunkier teenage girls turns tricks for passing truck drivers. Smaller children wipe windscreens in hopeful expectation of a tip. bigger boys do A Little Bit Of This, A Little Bit Of That.
Periodically the disagreeable Madam (Kuznetsova) arrives with couples that are eager to adopt and who don’t mind paying a hefty price for prime urchin. Vanya, as far as the others are concerned, wins the golden ticket out of there when a wealthy, glamorous Italian couple decide they’d like take him in.
He, however, has other ideas. With some help from the older kids, he learns to read and attempts to steal relevant documents so that he might find his natural mother.
Like many of the early and superior Dogme films, debutant director Andrei Kravchuk counterpoints stark realism with every melodramatic device in the book. The occasionally twinkling score, dewy-eyed foundlings and Dickensian plotting leave you in little doubt that we’re in feel good fairy-tale territory. Is it shameless audience manipulation? Well yes, but by golly it’s effective.