SECOND SCREEN

Lion (PG) is one of those films that make no attempt to conceal its heart-warming intentions and I did wonder, as we lumbered well into a second hour, whether a little more subtlety and surprise might not have gone amiss. It’s the story of Saroo, a five-year-old Indian boy who becomes accidentally but irrevocably separated from his poor but loving family and finds himself alone and battling for survival on the dangerous streets of Calcutta, only to have his life transformed when he is suddenly adopted by a comfortably-off Australian couple. But then, guess what? He gets all grown-up and suddenly determines he will find his birth family, despite the fact that the name of the home village he thinks he can remember doesn’t seem to exist. The similarities to Slumdog Millionaire are obvious but, nevertheless, the first half of this Garth Davisdirected picture is wonderful, thanks partly to a truly authentic sense of place created by the director and his location team but principally to an absolutely enchanting performance from newcomer Sunny Pawar, who is totally convincing as the very small, very frightened Saroo.

Devoted to his older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate), and determined to do what he can to help feed his family, Saroo begs to be taken along on a short journey to find night-work. But the little boy clambers into an empty train while Guddu is gone and falls asleep, only to wake up, locked in and speeding across India.

More than 1,600km away, he arrives in Calcutta, a city he’s never heard of, where they speak Bengali rather than Hindi and where he’s immediately