Little Big Girl

This family-oriented period drama adapts Truffaut's L'Enfant Sauvage to gently moralising effect. Werner is appealing as 'stinky Tinke', a strong-willed, late 19th century seven-year-old who has survived in the woods following the death through illness of her eloped parents - her mother, the daughter of a family of substance, her father a peasant. Credibility is strained watching Tinke transform from a wild child who bites wolves to a teacher-by-example of class- and prejudice-defying values through her relationship with a family (notably the half-witted gentle giant Laurus). But the film's essential decency, warmth, cinematic competence and standard of acting are enough to commend it.