'KEYS' WILL HONESTLY TUG AT YOUR HEART.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

'TIS THE SEASON - awards-grubbing season, that is - when L.A. is flooded with pandering piffle about cute, troubled foreign kids. These films are usually designed to warm the cockles of academy voters' sclerotic hearts (see French entry ``The Chorus,'' also starting an Oscar-qualifying run Wednesday; or better yet, don't), and only a handful of them since ``Shoeshine'' and ``400 Blows'' have had anything honest to say about unhappy childhoods.

``The Keys to the House'' comes off pretty well in this category. Though hardly at the level of Vittorio De Sica or Francois Truffaut, Gianni Amelio's study of a man getting to know his 15-year-old developmentally disabled son for the first time puts a high premium on emotional realism and keeps the manipulative business to a minimum. Persuasively acted by Kim Rossi Stuart as the dad, Gianni, and young Andrea Rossi, who shares medical conditions with the movie's Paolo, this Italian movie moves us by the accretion of logical behavioral detail, not duct-squeezing blackmail. And it offers no easy answers where other films of this ilk falsely insist there might be some.

``He's a super kid - you don't deserve him,'' Gianni's not-quite brother-in-law says as he prepares to hand off Paolo at a train station. The boy's mother died in childbirth, driving Gianni to abandon him altogether and leaving her relatives to rear the child. Now Gianni is married and has a baby boy, but, for reasons never mentioned, has agreed to accompany Paolo, who can barely walk with a cane, to a physical therapy center in Berlin.

In Germany, Gianni naturally grows to love the chatty, imaginative Paolo. We do, too; young Rossi is a genuine charmer, a factor that director Amelio admits changed his movie so much from its original conception that he feels he can no longer even call it an adaptation of the book it was inspired by, Giuseppe Pontiggia's ``Born Twice.'' But the boy can also be difficult, delusional and ornery, and we share Gianni's discomfort with his own growing desire to bring Paolo home to join his new family. Charlotte Rampling plays a French woman, Nicole, who tries to help Gianni cope by sharing the wisdom, pain and guilt she's gleaned from a life devoted to her own more severely disabled daughter.

Amelio, whose ``Stolen Children'' was also a good - if quite different - troubled-kids movie, brings a disciplined, documentary-like artistry to ``Keys.'' Berlin seems impersonal but not foreboding - an OK place for a father and son to get to know one another, but no room for fairy-tale nostalgia or unwarranted hopes, either - and the Germans are nicely portrayed as helpful if a little bit, um, overzealous.

But of course, ``Keys to the House's'' greatest strength is its heartening lack of judgmentalism. However much Gianni and Nicole might beat themselves up for their parental failings, or Paolo may make us wish he knew what he was doing at all times rather than just sporadically, we always understand why these people feel the way they do and, remarkably, believe we well might act the same were we in their shoes.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE KEYS TO THE HOUSE - Three stars

(Not rated: children in jeopardy, nudity)

Starring: Kim Rossi Stuart, Andrea Rossi, Charlotte Rampling.

Director: Gianni Amelio.

Running time: 1 hr. 47 min.

Playing: Opening Wednesday at Westside Pavilion, West Los Angeles, for a one-week Oscar-qualifying run.

In a nutshell: After 15 years, a father meets the disabled son he's never seen and struggles to cope with the waves of affection and stress the new relationship brings. Moving precisely because of its straightforward, realistic and unsentimental approach. In Italian and German with English subtitles.

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Photo:

Kim Rossi Stuart, left, is a father who gets to know his developmentally disabled son, played by Andrea Rossi, as a teenager in ``The Keys to the House.''