Once You're Born

Giordana’s extremely disappointing follow-up to ‘The Best of Youth’ centres on 12-year-old Sandro (Gadola), son of a well-off Brescia factory owner (Boni), who goes on a yachting trip with his dad and a friend, only to fall overboard. Happily for the boy (if not for us), he’s miraculously rescued by a Romanian youth (Toma) who, like his younger sister and a gaggle of other illegal immigrants, is being ferried towards Italy by two ruthless people traffickers. As the movie slides deeper into melodrama, its child’s-eye perspective on poverty, suffering and desperation becomes ever more inadequate, ever more condescending. One suspects even Berlusconi might like this movie.