by MATTHEW HAYS

The opening shots of I'm Not Scared capture what feels like an ocean of wheat, rippling in the wind. Cinematographer Italo Petriccione's camera work is nothing short of remarkable, with the rich hues and tones of this natural setting captured perfectly.

But despite this locale, the seemingly calm rural Italian setting of the film suggests something sinister lies beneath the crops. Enter one wee nine-year-old (Giuseppe Cristiano), an outcast from his village's pre-pubescent social set who is quite clearly a bit of a loner. Shockingly, Cristiano sees what he first believes is a ghost lying in a dark cellar beneath a farmhouse.

But as his curiosity is piqued, Cristiano continues to leer, learning that the pale and emaciated boy tied up underground is no ghost. Mattia di Pierro plays the prisoner, a young lad much like Cristiano who's been kidnapped by Italian thugs for a ransom.

Perilous perspective

The scenario does sound potentially exploitative, but director Gabriele Salvatores (who won a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in '92 for Mediterraneo) handles the action so well, deftly dousing his film with serious suspense rather than sleaze. One of the most striking things about this movie is the way in which Salvatores shows us the tension entirely through the perspective of a nine-year-old boy, while never becoming condescending or patronizing. This is one of those taut, edge-of-your-seat thrillers, the kind Italy was famous for making in the '60s and '70s.

Tension builds as the two boys' friendship grows, when it becomes increasingly clear that Cristiano cannot tell the authorities about his mate's plight. He's stuck with the secret, trying to help his friend survive by bringing him food and water whenever he can. I'm Not Scared is great creepy fun - the kind of film that keeps you up at night. (It is also a film with severe potential spoilers - don't worry, I won't be the one ruining any of them for you, but be careful what you read before seeing it.)

Set in '78, I'm Not Scared is based on the hit Niccolò Ammaniti novel, one that immediately grabbed the attention of director Salvatores. With a long history as both a filmmaker and a theatrical director (Salvatores co-founded Milan's famous Theatre Elfo in '72), Salvatores says the book had him hooked from page one. "The book began as a screenplay, in fact," says Salvatores, sitting down to discuss his discovery at the Toronto International Film Festival. "Niccolò is a huge fan of cinema so he wrote it that way. I knew right away that it was perfect for film. What I liked about the story was the idea of making a thriller entirely from the point of view of a child. I liked the idea of two people getting together who are initially scared of each other, but who then realize how much alike they are. They discover their solidarity. There's something to learn from a story like this."

Day for night

As well, Salvatores says he was drawn to the idea of something horrific happening in broad daylight, of evil and sinister things occurring under the glare of the sun.

"We are so used to thrillers set in the city," he says, "where there is darkness, shadows, and loads of people. I liked what Hitchcock did in North by Northwest, the sequence that happens in the cornfield where Cary Grant is running away from the crop duster. There he is, under the sun, suspense where you just don't expect it. I'm Not Scared, as well, features something where you don't expect anything to be hidden."

Salvatores says he did draw on kiddies-in-peril movies throughout history, though not specifically any Italian ones. Instead, he points to The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton's '55 landmark suspense-chase movie that starred Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish and Shelley Winters (in one of her many watery-ending roles).

"I looked at that film again, and to see it once more was truly amazing. That film made me think of certain themes and ideas, in particular the threat of very sinister adults hanging about and the threat the children do - and don't - sense about them. I also thought of Stand by Me and Truffaut's L'Enfant sauvage.

"I think The Sixth Sense was a case that was much better than many other films with children in them. So much of the time, the children are simply used superficially. What I tried to do is make children the authors of the film. During auditions I was not looking for skilled children. I was looking for children who had something in their lives that was in common with the characters they were supposed to play."

For this, Salvatores jokes about becoming a "little Strasberg," referring to the big-screen Method acting guru Lee Strasberg. "Initially, Mattia [the boy who plays the boy in the hole] couldn't really understand his role. What I did was to take him aside and find something of his own experience, something that would be similar to finding himself stuck in the hole. I asked him if he'd ever found himself stuck in a pitch-black room, but he said that he always kept a nightlight on. I asked if his father had ever scolded him for reasons he didn't really understand, to which he said no, his father never scolds him. I was in a bind!

"So I asked him to find something within himself. And he came back a couple of days later and said, ‘I get it, I think it's like being very sad but not being able to tell anyone about it.' I knew we had our actor then."

When in a pinch

Salvatores acknowledges Italy's long history of using children in movies, from Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief to Lina Wertmuller's Ciao, Professore! to Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful.

"Children are perfect actors because in many respects they don't pretend, they actually live what they're playing," Salvatores argues. "We have a tradition in Italian cinema of working with children. De Sica used to tell a story about working with a child who didn't want to cry for the camera. So De Sica simply pinched this child as hard as he could and then said to the cameraman, ‘Okay, now shoot!' I certainly don't do that in my filmmaking."

Salvatores flinches when I bring up Italy's latest political horror, namely Silvio Berlusconi, the man now leading the country. "The situation for filmmakers in Italy is very complex right now. The financial support from TV isn't something you can rely on anymore, which you used to be able to. And Berlusconi has a virtual monopoly over the media. The private TV stations are all his, but the public TV also feels his weight, as he's in power. He also owns distribution companies and the TV advertising concessions. He's tremendously right wing and wields huge amounts of power.

"Having said that, we have had cinematic success stories in recent years, despite the roadblocks. There has been greater success with Italians going to see Italian movies. Now we have to go beyond our borders, tell our own stories and maintain our roots while speaking to a broader, international audience."

I'm Not Scared opens Friday, April 23

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