Antonio (Enrico Lo Verso), a carabiniere (Italian policeman), has to escort two children: Rosetta (Valentina Scalici) and her brother Luciano (Giuseppe Ieracitano) to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing eleven year old Rosetta into prostitution. Antonio and the children begin their relationship with mutual resentment, but over the long and eventful journey they develop a friendship. While the children struggle to escape their past, Antonio discovers even kindness has its consequences.
This thoughtful, at times painfully honest, drama proceeds at its own, episodic pace and remains engaging from start to finish. Unlike many of its English language counterparts, the film never resorts to delivering a lecture. Co-writer/director Gianni Amelio grounds his observations in character detail, which ensures this remains compelling cinema as well as social commentary. He refuses to sentimentalise the children’s poverty. It hasn’t bonded them together, but created an often-fractious relationship wherein Luciano admits he’d ditch his sister for a chance at happiness. Early on, Antonio declares all criminals should be locked up. For him, the law is the law, but the journey opens his eyes to how much damage has been done to these children, and how slight their chances are for a happy future. Enrico Lo Verso excels as an ordinary guy saddled with two, unwanted kids. Antonio just wants to do his duty and go home, but his conscience keeps nagging him.
Neither Valentina Scalici nor Giuseppe Ieracitano had any acting experience prior to this film. Both deliver performances of remarkable naturalism, utterly believable as characters whose childhood (as the title observes) has indeed been stolen. Scalici shoulders the bulk of the drama and is particularly outstanding. A happy interlude has Antonio bring the kids to his sister’s house, where the family celebrates a little girl’s first holy communion. There amidst the warmth of familial conviviality, things turn sour when one woman recognises Rosetta’s picture from a newspaper. Time and again characters recoil from Rosetta upon discovering she was a child prostitute. Amelio develops this into a stinging indictment of bourgeois hypocrisy. It is as though society has tainted Rosetta with an irremovable black mark that prevents her ever having another identity. Her future is curtailed before it has even begun.
Amelio accuses society of having no time for compassion. Antonio tries to do the right thing by the children and is duly chastised by his boss (“Instead of being a policeman, you should have joined the Red Cross”). The film concludes on a note of quiet despair, tinged with only the faintest trace of hope. It’s frustrating, but honest and refuses to provide any easy answers.
