Want an entertaining and bonding family experience? Here's an idea: Watch a foreign-language movie with your children. Wait, come back. I mean it. You read books to your kids, don't you? What's so different about reading them a movie? It doesn't have to be one of the warhorses of world cinema. I'm the first to admit that anyone who screens the 1948 neo-realist classic “The Bicycle Thief” for a small child deserves a visit from the Social Services van. And yet, parents assume the only appropriate movies for their spawn are the ones hoarsely sold to them by the major studios: the computer-generated sequels, the fractious book adaptations. Few of those films hint there might be a wider world out there beyond the Hollywood entertainment machine, one not predicated on numbing us with diversion. Pixar's one thing and “Barnyard” is quite another, but there's no other choice, is there? Of course there is. The trick is to find a foreign-language movie that invites younger viewers in and makes them feel at home. One easy solution: If a kid is in the movie, your kids will probably want to watch it. I tried out the wonderful 1959 Japanese film “Good Morning” (also known as “Ohayo”) on my daughters when they were quite young, and they were hooked - the movie went in the heavy rotation pile for a few months. Yes, the director is Yasujiro Ozu, and the pace is his usual contemplative amble, but this richly hued portrait of the denizens of a Tokyo suburb is both wise and hysterical. The plot is about two young brothers who bug their parents for a TV set - a novelty in postwar Japan - and who go on strike to get it. “Good Morning” is alert to the whole world of boys, though, up to and including the fart jokes. It's the rare comedy about kids to connect them to the grown-ups and to show where youthful impulsiveness can turn into gentle adult hypocrisy. And, yes, very funny. That's for starters. If you're fed up with your children OD-ing on Disney princess movies, you can rock their tiny world by renting poet-director Jean Cocteau's dreamlike 1946 “Beauty and the Beast” (also known as “La Belle et la Bête”). It's in black and white but when your kids see the human arm candelabras, they'll fall in. If you can't take one more screening of “High School Musical,” try “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” a candy-colored through-sung 1964 musical about a small-town girl (Catherine Deneuve) in love. In general, foreign-language movies do offer tougher meat for kids to chew on than the bland diet we usually feed them. I say that's a good thing, but you can decide what's appropriate for your own children. “CJ7,” for instance - the most recent movie from Hong Kong's Stephen Chow - has an adorable alien dog-bot but also plays a bit rougher than your average “Ice Age” sequel. My daughters enjoyed it (a lot) while understanding that they weren't being coddled; they came out talking about how different cultures tell stories in different ways. Same with “Persepolis,” the much-praised animated French-language film about a young girl growing up in revolutionary Iran. The movie has just been re-released with an English-language soundtrack, but there's something to be said for watching a foreign experience in the tongue in which it was written. My girls have watched “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” in both subtitled and dubbed versions; the key factor seems to be their energy level when they start the DVD. The nice thing about kids is that they continually surprise you, especially if you're getting off on being a pretentious film daddy. I thought the films of Jacques Tati would be a slam-dunk, especially since my daughters loved “Mr. Bean's Holiday,” a blatant homage to the French comic genius. No dice: The ultra-droll pace killed the laughs. And yet when I re-screened 1954's “The Seven Samurai” for an article a few years back, the girls plonked down beside me and insisted on watching the film in all its 141-minute, black-and-white glory. We've similarly splurged on Bollywood epics like “Lagaan”, and we've made the occasional wrong turn, too. My wife wanted the girls to see her all-time favorite movie, Fellini's “Amarcord,” forgetting that the movie contains inappropriate scenes. The girls reacted as if we'd poured lye into their eyes. They survived, of course, and as they've gotten older they've learned that foreign-language movies can offer deeper pleasures and meaning than the RDA moral lessons Hollywood family films come with. Sometimes they don't feel like “reading a movie”, don't we all? But sometimes they do, and now that they're stepping into adolescence the enjoyment they've had from last year's “Linda Linda Linda,” about a Japanese schoolgirl pop-group, or the stylish “Diva,” or the absorbing “The Band's Visit” is genuine and cheering. Last night, over dinner, my older daughter Eliza and I watched “Amélie,” the 2001 art-house smash about a Parisian eccentric played by Audrey Tautou. My daughter grumbled when she realized it'd be difficult to take in the narration-heavy subtitles and eat at the same time. After a few minutes, though, she put down her fork and sat there, rapt and giggling. “I love her,” she murmured at one point, and I trembled a little at the door I heard opening. - The Boston Globe __
