Tackles issues like guilt, shame and compassion with admirable sensitivity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 5, 2005

Amelio, one of the true modern heirs of the great Italian neo-realist tradition, is a filmmaker of great subtlety, emotional precision and socio-psychological acumen.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 9, 2005

Radiates a warm humanity and uplifts the spirit.

| Jun 9, 2005

Amelio intelligently steers clear of lachrymose speeches, swelling orchestral music, and cheap redemption and instead probes away at the ambivalent feelings of parents towards their handicapped off-spring.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 29, 2005

Amelio deals with the sensitive subject in a mature matter, refusing to descend into Hollywood-style schmaltz.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 27, 2004

It takes a story that could be turned into the most florid kind of tear-jerker and instead tells it with an exactness and a restraint that makes it powerfully effective.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 22, 2004

Both Rossi and Charlotte Rampling, as the mother of another young patient, do fine work. But the only surprises come at the end, too late to move us the way they should.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 22, 2004

The kind of quietly unassuming tear-jerker that works its way into your heart despite the occasional cries of protest emanating from your head.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 21, 2004

Amelio's camera captures with subtlety and without sentimentality the state of mind of a parent for whom every child running freely in the park is a painful reminder of another's limitations.

| Dec 21, 2004

Feels as if its being telegraphed from a cosmic fugue state, and means to get (and stay) beneath the skin.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 8, 2004