In a return to European-style auteurship, Amodeo writes, directs, and stars in this bare bones low-budget gem of a "Little Match Girl" reboot. Like Edward Hopper and the ashcan school of art, this film focuses on a ragtag milieu of mendicants, bohos, bums, and junkies in their natural habitat, a bleak dystopic graffiti-gilded New York cityscape in midwinter. All of whom come across refreshingly ingenuous and unrehearsed. Shades of early Truffaut and the bicycle thief! The meandering episodic nature of Lisa's last days comes across as both mundane and heart-wrenching--she is the littlest most unlikely saint of the meanest streets. One wishes to see her in a third incarnation where she is a perpetually pampered princess free of pain.
