Worth: $15.00
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Cast:
Josh O’Connor, Carol Duarte, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher
Intro:
… a complex film which cinema lovers should seek out.
La Chimera is, in some ways, quite an odd film. It is a film that is hard to pin down, just as a Chimera is a mythical part-female beast that has more than one aspect to its makeup. Of course, the term has become bastardised in modern English to mean anything mythical that people invoke and desire, and this meaning is here in Alice Rohrwacher’s rambling but hypnotic tale.
It is set in rural Italy outside Rome where the Roman overlay of the ancient earthy Etruscan civilisation is somehow never complete. There is direct evidence of this presence, not least in the many Etruscan tombs, some of which have never been discovered or raided for the sale of antiquities. Enter Arthur (Josh O’Connor) and his ragged band of tomb robbers who make their living from plundering the tombs, which they mostly find via Arthur’s strange water-diving gifts.
The film is very long and deliberately loose in style, at times it is a bit deranged. It is also very fresh and free filmmaking that mixes long, seemingly improvised, scenes of revelry to evoke an atmosphere rather than distinct characters. A lot of it is shot at night using firelight. Parts of it reminds one of some scenes in Beasts of the Southern Wild for example, but this is very specifically and distinctly Italian.
Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro) is a confident part of new Italian cinema. She clearly loves her players (including sister Alba) in this film, and she gets them all to evoke a way of life that is a bit Gypsyish with a touch of darkness about it too. There is a love story woven in here as well which again helps it to defy easy genre classification.
The revelation is Josh O’Connor, coming up in Luca Guadagnino’s tennis film Challengers, which gives another Italian connection. We are unsure if he can actually speak Italian but he certainly convinces here linguistically when he spits out his terse slang-ridden utterances.
He is making interesting choices, and one senses that he could go in lots of different directions. Previously, he was all stiff upper lip and using his likeness to Prince (King) Charles to good effect in a great turn in The Crown. Here, he is swarthy and rough-looking. He has a brooding slightly dangerous quality that fills out the portrayal of Arthur as a loner who longs for a peace that he knows he cannot attain.
It is a complex film which cinema lovers should seek out.