LA CHIMERA Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Alice Rohrwacher
Stars: Josh O’Connor, Carol Duarte, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher, Yile Vianello, Vincenzo Nemolata, Ramona Fiorini.
Tuscany in the 1980s is the setting for this hybrid heist comedy come romance from Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher (Happy As Lazzaro, etc).
Arthur (played by Josh O’Connor, from tv series The Crown and recently seen in Challengers) is a down on his luck British archaeologist with an interest in the history of the region. He has recently been released from prison and currently lives in a squalid shantytown on the outskirts of the small village of Lazio. He falls in with a gang of grave robbers, known as the Tombaroli, who raid tombs for their valuable Etruscan treasures, which they then sell to a shady antiques dealer known as Spartaco (played by the director’s sister). Arthur still clings to the old practice of using a dowser to locate the buried treasures, and this ability gives him mystical status amongst his fellow thieves. But there seems to be friction between Arthur and his fellow grave robbers which plays out as the film progresses.
Arthur still pines for Beniamina, a girl he fell in love for while studying. But she has died under mysterious circumstances and now only lives on in his memory. Beniamina was the daughter of Flora (Isabella Rossellini), an eccentric faded former opera singer who lives in a crumbling old mansion where she conducts music lessons. The crumbling mansion seems to be a metaphor for the village itself, which has also seen better times. Arthur becomes involved with Flora’s latest student Italia (Brazilian actress Carol Duarte, from The Invisible Life Of Euridice Gusmao, etc), a single mother who also works as a servant and she is also concealing her two young children in the sprawling house.
This is the fourth feature for Rohrwacher, and like much of her work it has a cryptic, beguiling quality that may not appeal to everybody. It is also her most ambitious film to date. The script was written by Rohrwarcher in collaboration with her regular collaborator Carmela Covino and Mario Pettenello. Rohrwacher brings plenty of quirky, almost surreal Felliniesque touches of humour and offbeat visual style to the material, which is typical of much of the Italian cinema of the 60s and 70s. She also employs lots of flashbacks, which tend to lead to some confusion on the audience’s behalf. The title is both a reference to a mythical monster of Greek legend but also to something ephemeral and an object that is hard to obtain.
With an overly generous runtime of 130 minutes though, La Chimera seems unnecessarily bloated and outstays its welcome by a good twenty minutes. The first half, in particular, is leisurely paced and tends to drag before the pace picks up.
However the film has been evocatively shot by regular cinematographer Helene Louvart, who gives us a strong sense of place and captures the picturesque Tuscany landscapes. She also imbues the material with touches of magic realism and she infuses the flashback sequences with a dreamy, melancholy-like tone, shot in a boxy format that recalls the old home movies of yesteryear.
O’Connor apparently learned to speak Italian for this role, and he brings a suitably downbeat and disheveled quality to his performance. Rosselinni makes the most of her smaller role as the formidable matriarch of Beniamina’s family.
La Chimera is a slow-paced drama but I didn’t engage with the story or feel a strong connection to these quirky characters. La Chimera is a film of limited appeal for mainstream audiences.
★★☆
