ORPHAN STORY FULL OF HUMANITY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Despite its title, ``The Italian'' is Russia's foreign language Oscar entry. The name derives from the fact that its central figure, an adorable 6-year-old Russian orphan named Vanya, is waiting for the paperwork to go through so he can be adopted by an Italian couple.

And waiting none too happily. Even though Vanya lives in an awful children's home run by a venal drunk in a cold, ugly provincial town, warm, comfortable and candy-rich Italy doesn't sound all that great to him. And not just because of the urban legends that echo around the orphanage's grimy dorms once the lights go out. Urban legends like how the lucky few who get sent to the West really aren't lucky because they're just going to get their organs harvested.

No, big-eyed little Vanya's main concern is that the mother he never knew might still be alive. What if she comes looking for him after he's gone and his name gets changed?

So, at great personal risk (even learning to read so he can trace his own records is punishable by beatings), Vanya takes increasingly radical measures to track down the parent who probably doesn't exist. And if she does, well, she abandoned him as an infant. But the kid's 6. How can we expect good sense to trump his need to know who he really might be?

``The Italian'' seems quite Russian in its hard-bitten humanism. Except for the hopeless Headmaster (rodentlike Yuri Itskov), the worst people -- a relentlessly greedy baby broker (Maria Kuznetsova); her enforcer (Nicolai Reutov); Kolyan (Denis Moiseenko), who runs the teenage crime gang that really keeps the orphanage functioning -- have their redeeming or at least empathetic, moments.

Kolya Spiridonov, who plays the fragile yet implacable Vanya, is completely captivating. Part of you just wants to bundle him up and hug him, but the spunk that leads him into trouble is also the only thing that's going to get such a delicate boy through the crumbling, survivalist landscape of the post-communist empire. He's a lamb in a wolf-infested land of ruins. It's only Vanya's foolish courage that enables him to find the few good shepherds who are still out there to protect him.

``The Italian'' is documentary and TV director Andrei Kravchuk's first feature film. He made it to call attention to Russia's epidemic of abandoned children and the shady adoption industry that has sprung up around it.

He plays some well-worn hands. There's a teenage hooker with the proverbial golden heart and longing staring through ice-encrusted windows. But Kravchuk also clearly knows the world he's depicting, and however stereotyped ``The Italian's'' characters may be, most leave a strong-willed impression uniquely their own.

There is uplift amid all the grimness. It doesn't always ring entirely true, but so much of it is so hard-won, it almost never feels saccharine. Troubled foreign kids is a venerable enough genre at this point, and ``The Italian'' is certainly a decent addition to the group.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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THE ITALIAN - Three stars

(PG-13: violence, children in jeopardy, language, drug use, sexual situations)

Starring: Kolya Spiridonov, Denis Moiseenko, Olga Shuvalova, Maria Kuznetsova, Yuri Itskov.

Director: Andrei Kravchuk.

Running time: 1 hr. 39 min.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.; Westpark 8, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Hard-nosed, if somewhat sentimentalized, story of a young Russian orphan who, before he's adopted by a nice Italian couple, insists on trying to find his birth mother. In Russian and Italian with English subtitles.