Miramax continues to mishandle its foreign films in the instance of "I'm Not Scared," an excellent Italian drama that Miramax
for some reason is marketing as a thriller. The film's poster, which I first saw upon exiting a screening of the film, says, "Secrets. Betrayal. Murder. Who can you trust when everyone's a suspect?" This has so little to do with the movie's actual content that I stood there, nonplused, for several seconds before I realized Miramax and I were talking about the same movie. For you see, while "I'm Not Scared" does indeed have thriller elements -- there is a kidnapping, for example, and a cover-up -- its excellence lies in its perspective, which is through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy. Because the boy hardly realizes, at first, that the boy he's found shackled in a ditch is a kidnap victim, much less that people he knows are responsible for the crime, the thrills and chills are not immediately evident. To the boy, it's a curious adventure, an interesting thing to have happen during a lazy summer. He's "not scared" because he doesn't grasp the full import of everything. He's only a kid, after all. It is 1978 in southern Italy, in a rural village populated by poor workers and their children. Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) and his little sister Maria (Giulia Matturo) wander through the fields with their contemporaries, playing games and looking for mischief. Their new haunt is a dilapidated old shack of a house that is exactly the sort of place kids love to play. It is a tetanus shot waiting to happen.
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