Largely the fault of roles given them by adults, truly good child actors are few and far between. Dimpled Freddie Bartholomew and dimpled Shirley Temple on -- Judy Garland was already seventeen as Dorothy from Kansas, a part first intended for the ten-year-old Temple -- they are too syrupy or Faunteleroy-like, kitsch or cutesy, or unrealistically adult and ingenious beyond their screen years. Wise novelists, on the other hand, avoid the problem by quickly passing beyond babytalk -- A Portrait of the Artst as a Young Man -- or having the now grown-up child recount his own past -- Great Expectations; and Huck and Holden are innocent but not little.

Spoken narration is a filmic betrayal, as well, a cop-out way to tell rather than show or dramatize. Thus, there is a double dilemma in Valentín, basically voiced from start to finish by its title character, a portrait of writer/director Alejandro Agresti's own sad, effectively parentless young boyhood.
At least for those who must depend on the subtitles, narrational falseness is alleviated to a degree -- not so for Spanish speakers -- and Agresti has been careful with, and fortunate in, his cast, particularly so in novice Rodrigo Noya, picked from over three-hundred aspirants at a casting call.

In politically unstable, conservative and more than a bit anti-Semitic Buenos Aires of the 1960s, the cross-eyed, angel-faced boy lives with his loving, crotchety, widowed and terribly lonely grandmother (Carmen Maura). Awaiting a call from NASA, the eight-year-old builds and tests homemade space equipment. More, he dreams of forming part of a real family, with flesh-and-blood father and mother like school chum Roberto or yet unseen infant cousin Mariela. For reasons unclear to him, his beautiful mother left him to his choleric father Vicente (played by director Agresi), who in turn deposited him with Grandma and only seldom visits, usually to yell, show off and talk about the latest of a line of girlfriends, a number of whom Valentín has hoped will become his mother.

Mature in ways beyond his chronological age -- actually, disturbingly so during his daylong "date" with Dad's current lady friend -- "Vale" wears thick Buddy Holly glasses and mixes easily with adults. There are, for instance, lonely, unlucky-in-love neighbor Rufo (musician Mex Urtizbeara), who drinks and plays jazz and classical piano, and that lovely lady friend of the hour, twenty-two-year-old Leticia (Julieta Cardinali). His earnest honesty sometimes works out in this grown-up world, as when a clinic doctor is persuaded to treat Grandma, but as often causes complications, as in the case of his father's love life.

In the Jewishness of Rufo and of Valentín's lost mother--about whose love a former boyfriend will furnish information -- and in a priest's homily for compassion after the killing of Argentina's Che Guevara, a nod is made in the direction of problems of the era. But the essence here is neither time nor place; rather, the focal point is the loneliness of childhood, and the need for love, family and connectedness, a sense of belonging.

The director has spoken of consciously avoiding "complicated plots, heroes, and extreme situations." Valentin is a simple piece about a boy's search for normality. Like many young people, along the way he will try on different hats -- Neil Armstrong beats him to the moon, so he changes from incipient space pioneer to man of letters -- and the film-child is most effective when he is being a child and not falsely solving adult dilemmas.

Though too slow for young viewers (who in any case will not easily read subtitles), the film is essentially good family fare, a slice of a child's life, one that turns out happily. The protagonist's comments about the world are sometimes on target. But since there is no ironic distance between narrator Valentín and an "author's" or outsider's point of view -- as there is, say, between Huck's voice and Twain's implication --the result is nice and simple, but also too simplistic to suggest anything in the way of food for thought afterwards.

(Released by Miramax and rated "PG-13" for some thematic elements and language.)