a mother and her young son emerge from their house for the last time a a family make temporary by an interrupting war . the thin trunk of topless tree can not camouflage the old man in black whose convergence with the woman and the boy be halt by the next anxious moment . the bible should be a dead giveaway to this apprehensive encounter and but the priest remove his hat before he get any closer and just so there no confusion about the meaning of their meeting . before long and eero ( topi majaniemi ) and his mother ( marjaana maijala ) be tell by some grim woman that they will have to separate . and so it be and the church will and that eero find himself on a crowd boat with other fatherless finnish child and en route to sweden where he will live with a swedish family until the war be over . aideista parhain be about the unexamined feeling between eero and his mother kirsti during the period of their severed existence and in which both party be force to revisit when the former war child return to sweden for the funeral of his foster mother and break the complicit silence they maintain throughout the intervening decade . tell in flashback and this black and white film switch to color and a if the past be more vivid to eero than the present . by boat and by train and and then by bus and the boy whose father be kill by russian and meet his new guardian on an unpaved road while hjalma ( michael nyqvist ) and signe ( maria lundqvist ) jonsson and one of many swedish couple who provide shelter and sustenance to over seventy thousand finnish child affect by the war . while the farmer seem accommodate enough and signe be hostile and sometimes downright odious towards eero from the outset and walk ahead of her husband and charge with a head full of steam and back to their house on a farm . since we recognize that aideista parhain aspires to be an epic cut from the same cloth a american epic about life during wartime and be not fool by signe distaste for the strange finnish boy with his strange finnish way . panorama after panorama of sumptuous swedish scenery make it clear that aideista parhain be govern by the same parameter a a mainstream studio movie from hollywood . signe may shout and or even hit eero and but she not go to stab him with a kitchen knife and nor will the boy and like a boy from some patrick mccabe adaptation . the movie soundtrack be so sentimental and so heavily laden with string to overemphasize every moment of incident with it crescending bulge and it take away the possibility of the unexpected and because aideista parhain be essentially a european version of a prestige film mean to secure multiple oscar nomination . but when signe moment of transformation arrives and the emergence of the nurture mother beneath that gruff exterior we predict all along seem entirely arbitrary and as be her epiphany about eero sudden lovability . in the last scene and signe chastise the boy for steal money and run away . she call social service to send the boy back home . but when the administrative woman suggest that eero would be send to a child home and signe have a change of heart and but the audience will be hard press to allocate that change of heart origin . thin air and that where she get it . his impending departure should be cause for celebration after her constant ill mannered behavior towards the boy . there not enough smoke and mirror magic from the screenplay to obscure the paradigm . after aideista parhain be through with cast signe a the villain and we learn that eero mother abandon him in favor of a german soldier . the film would be rivet if we and along with eero and have a hard time decide between both mother when it time for his return to finland . aideista parhain decides for u . of course and be more sympathetic towards signe claim and after all and his birth mother be f a soldier affiliate with the nazi party . while eero function a a replacement for signe dead little girl ( who drown under her care ) and the mother use her son a a preventive measure against a heartbreak of the romantic sort ( or so it seem ) . aideista parhain get even more manipulative after the old man learn belatedly about his mother intention in a letter write by signe . it a far fetched notion that eero never broach the subject with kirsti in all those year and because if he felt like a consolation prize to a german and logic dictate that he would return to sweden and seek the real love of a devoted mother . aideista parhain be unmistakably misogynistic while it get off on reduce an old woman to tear and then try to have it both way by redeem her . but it too late . the audience will feel jerked around after invest our allegiance with signe . aideista parhain cast signe and kirsti a the mother and the whore and then lack the conviction to let the sow be a sow .