OPENS SEPTEMBER 12, CERT PG, 95 MINS
A chronological compilation drawn from six one-hour films by the late Desmond Wilcox, The Boy David Story concerns David Lopez, abandoned by his Campa Indian parents as a baby when he contracted a rare, hideous disease that destroyed the centre of his face. Rescued by a Swiss charity worker from a Peruvian hospital, Lopez was taken into care by plastic surgeon Ian Jackson and his wife Marjorie, who later adopted him. Today, following 95 operations, David Lopez is David Jackson, a 28-year-old graphic designer in LA.
This movie retraces his journey, the harrowing surgery he’s undergone and the struggles of his adoptive parents to acquire him a US visa in the face of Peruvian bureaucracy and callousness on the part of the American authorities, who at one point were determined to deport him. The Boy David Story is very sentimental?complete with a soundtrack comprising John Williams-style guitars and wistful pan-pipes?but, inevitably, deeply moving. The Boy done great.