Warning: this review contains spoilers.<br /><br />My experience with foreign films has generally not been very good. What happens is that all the professional movie critics will absolutely rave about a certain foreign movie, and my more intellectual friends will convince me to go see it with them. Then, when I'm actually watching the film, it will turn out to be about physically unattractive middle-aged people smoking cigarettes and discussing abstractions. After about twenty minutes of reading subtitles that could have been taken from a philosophy textbook, I fall asleep for the rest of the film. This is not because I am an ugly American. I spent my childhood in Canada, and I have the same reaction to Canadian films. I just happen to think most foreign movies that make it to America (like most American movies that make it to America) are dull. The reason I keep going to these films, however, is that occasionally there will be a pleasant surprise. "Life is Beautiful" is a good example. So is this film.<br /><br />This movie is about an old woman's first experience in the big city. Her abusive husband has fallen ill and has had to go to the big city hospital for treatment. The only other person in the city she knows is her daughter Maria.<br /><br />Maria is an overly-cynical alcoholic who hates her father. She resents having to work as a cleaning lady and blames all her woes on being poor. She lashes out in hostility to anyone who is kind to her and she thinks her mother's ideas about doing unto others is woefully naive. Things get worse when she gets pregnant and her self-centered bully of a boyfriend refuses to take responsibility.<br /><br />The real center of the movie, however, is not Maria, but her mother and her relationship with the kindly old man who lives in Maria's building. The old man lives alone with only a German shepherd named Achilles to keep him company. The mother and the old man strike up a friendship, and the old man falls in love with her. And when she visits her husband in the hospital, her husband sniffs her and tells her she stinks of other men.<br /><br />I found this movie extremely engaging and engrossing. What I particularly liked was that although it didn't give in to Maria's cynicism, neither did it pull any punches as to the way the world really works. I rooted for the mother to leave her husband for the old man, but I knew it would never happen (despite the fact that she admits that the old man is a better human being than her husband). I wanted Maria's boyfriend (who isn't all bad) to be a good boyfriend and a good father, but I knew it wouldn't happen either.<br /><br />This film is touching without being schlocky. It's heart-warming without being syrupy. The film's only real flaws were at the very start and the very end. At the start, I felt like I was just coming in at the middle since so much had apparently already happened that wasn't shown. And I thought the film's last twenty minutes could have been cut to ten without losing their impact.<br /><br />My original stance on foreign films stays as is: they tend to be overrated by critics simply because they weren't made in a Hollywood movie factory. But occasionally one comes along like "Solas" where the praise is justified. 9 out of 10.