Little Ida

A return to the theme of childhood innocence spoiled by the rigours of war which has recently seen distinguished service in Spirit of the Beehive and Muddy River. Here the setting is Northern Norway, 1944-5, and the child seven-year-old Ida, cruelly ostracised for her mother's liaison with a German soldier. Mikkelsen mostly stays the right side of the line between sensitivity and sentimentality, delicacy and dullness, supported by Sunniva Lindekleiv's winning performance as a mercifully un-cute child, and by some stunning cinematography, all in muted tones of grey and brown which suddenly explode, in the final victory procession, into a proud flurry of red Norwegian flags. In its own unassuming way, a small gem of miniaturist observation.