Critic's Grade: A+

Imagine that your father is a world famous cinematographer and the first time you try your hand,you hit the ball out of the park.
No,this is not about Sophia Coppola,it is the story by and about Costas Gavras' child.It starts and ends with the period when she lost her parents to the revolution in Chile.
When Fidel visited Allende he said:"Chile is like a good movie".Costa Garvas was determined to make that movie,which turned into" Missing."
Americans cannot make a credible movie about politics or children,this is one of the best films ever made about both.
The world is seen through the eyes of a 9 year old,played by Nina Kervel.
She starts out in a large Parisian home,surrounded by upper-class parents,maids,private Catholic school,and 4-course meals.With no apology she is dumped into a dingy apartment,her parents are absent,she ends up in public school,and is woken up at night by mobs of bearded Chilean radicals discussing politics in her living room.
Kervel does the only sensible thing-she runs of to the home of her conservative grandparents.
All policemen and all children everywhere are conservative.They do not welcome rapid change,all the more so if that change is for the worse.The serious question posed here is what price are parents willing to pay,or more pointedly,what price must their innocent children pay,while absent parents indulge themselves in saving the world.
At one point her father takes away her comic book,yelling that Mickey Mouse is a fascist!This was based on the book by Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman:" How To Read Donald Duck",a marxist critique.
The first article I published was in the same" Liberation "magazine issue that introduced Dorfman to American readers.
The movie works best when the adult Garvas forgots what she now knows about the politics of the period and simply shows us a child being dragged to a demonstration where she is gassed and trampled.
There is a complete cop-out where one of these previously obnoxious,intrusive,cigarrete smoking,Chilean leftist gives her a piece of orange,explaining that there are some people,who want the orange all to themselves.We are supposed to believe that this explanation magically reconciles the kid to her new,impoverished circumstances!
What the kid actually thought,at the time,was this bum wants to share my living room and my orange.
As an adult,at least 10 years later,she may have come to a more politically correct view,but that is not how she felt as a child.

All Reviews by Fred Landis
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