A heretofore unknown director, Sterling Van Wagenen, shows off a heart the size of a honeydew and a cinematic intelligence nearer a grape. In a dollhouse re-creation of Second World War-period New York, a traumatized French girl, methodically tearing up newspapers into tiny scraps, is coaxed back from the brink of catatonia by a neighbor boy (Lukas Haas) with a voice almost as high as Mickey Mouse's, and ears almost as large. It's a test of the spectator's patience as well as his sugar-tolerance: one-way conversations with a brick wall, a cracking-voiced rendition of "Frère Jacques," the opening of a line of communication between the boy's cowboy-outfitted ventriloquist's dummy and the girl's Dresden doll. The Jewish ethnicity is piled on to a height of Catskill shtick. No one takes to the task more naturally or less cartoonishly than Zohra Lampert (no one less naturally and more cartoonishly than Michael Gross), with her virtuosic accent and melodious phrasing. Her presence, regardless of how fleeting, provides sufficient justification for any movie. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd