Children of Heaven (1999)

The sentimentalization of poverty doesn't get much more sticky than in Majid Majidi's Iranian fable Children of Heaven, set on the wrong side of the Tehran tracks, about a 9-year-old boy who loses his sister's just-repaired shoes, which he then tries to replace. The plot feels less like a realistic dilemma than it does a willed exercise in neorealist catharsis — a way of inviting Western audiences to bask in their materialist ''empathy.'' (You watch the film and think, ''Ah, if only I valued every product I own this fervidly!'') As Ali, the sensitive young hero, Mir Farrokh Hashemian looks like a Keane-eyed moppet and seems to weep on cue in every other scene. There's a lot of doleful staring in the new Iranian films, but precious little talking; this one seems to be taking place in a world of human lambs. The climax, in which Ali attempts to win those precious sneakers by entering a foot race, is as slow-mo inspirational as anything in Chariots of Fire. Talk about having your economic desperation and eating it, too. C