The Italian import “I’m Not Scared” is dominated pictorially by vistas of sun-drenched wheat fields in the Puglia region of the south. At the outset, you expect a peasant saga of some kind, in the tradition of the Taviani brothers’ “Padre Padrone” or “Night of the Shooting Stars.” The scenic grandeur proves misleading, since the story is calculated to dredge up a peculiarly subterranean and disheartening quality of dread. The novelist Niccolo Ammaniti, who collaborated on an adaptation for director Gabriele Salvatores, invokes the title phrase as a fragile, childish protection against adult ruthlessness.
The 10-year-old protagonist, Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano), who lives with his parents and a kid sister in a parched and sparsely populated crossroads village, blunders upon a criminal conspiracy during his summer vacation. A crumbling villa, the site of bicycle excursions by Michele and his playmates, turns out to conceal a pit. Some kind of captive occupies it. Michele is too frightened to follow up instantly after a first glimpse of something awful. Moreover, Mr. Salvatores (repeatedly vain about “striking” pictorial effects) needs to orchestrate a scherzo composed of swiftly intercut traveling shots of the boy beating a hasty retreat through those shimmering wheat fields.
Overcome by curiosity, Michele returns to explore the fearful pit in detail. The occupant turns out to be not a modern Caliban but a boy of about his own age, Filippo (Mattia Di Pierro), filthy and disoriented and severely in need of food, drink and rescue. Michele returns with a loaf of bread as soon as possible. From television newscasts, he soon identifies Filippo as the kidnapped son of a wealthy family.
Michele is prevented from turning to his parents for assistance when it becomes apparent that a boarder called Sergio, a crony of his father’s, may be the ringleader of the kidnap gang. Moreover, Michele has every reason to fear that his father is an accomplice. So it’s an excruciating dilemma: The boy cannot do the right thing without causing harm to his own family.
To his credit, Michele does behave courageously throughout this ordeal. The problem is that the filmmakers are often oblivious to the severity of their case. Mr. Salvatores and his collaborators approach a shocker about child abuse and family disintegration as if it were the best of all possible pretexts for dilatory, evasive plot manipulation on one hand and self-indulgent visual embroidery on the other.
It’s a little puzzling that the kidnappers have no particular interest in keeping Filippo closely guarded or likely to survive. The parents (Dino Abbrescia and the very dishy Adriana Conserva) have no opportunity to explain their disgraceful involvement in the abduction, in part to protect a trashy notion of a surprise twist during the finale.
The filmmakers lyricize the poignant attachment between a valiant Michele and helpless Filippo. This emphasis demands a blithe disregard of social realities and consequences. If this is the beginning of a beautiful boyhood friendship, the price is grotesquely punitive and the social gulf far too wide to be bridged. Maybe there’s a sunny side to degeneracy, but “I’m Not Scared” hasn’t liberated it from Filippo’s pit. We’re watching characters whose lives are in ruins, some at a very tender age.
*1/2
TITLE: “I’m Not Scared”
RATING: R (Sustained ominous and morbid emphasis; occasional graphic violence, gruesome illustrative details, profanity and family conflict; plot concerns a kidnapped child)
CREDITS: Directed by Gabriele Salvatores. Screenplay by Niccolo Ammaniti and Francesca Marciano, based on the novel by Mr. Ammaniti. Cinematography by Italo Petriccione. Production design by Giancarlo Basili. Music by Pepo Scherman and Ezio Bosso. In Italian with English subtitles.
RUNNING TIME: 101 minutes
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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