There’s a sudden act of violence in the middle of La Chimera, the latest ethereally beguiling film from Alice Rohrwacher, which made me clamp my hand to my mouth in horror – even though it’s perpetrated against a piece of statuary. Such is the singularity of this director’s vision, her tender love of the Italian soil and the culture rooted in it.
If you’ve seen any of Rohrwacher’s earlier work (Corpo Celeste, The Wonders, Happy as Lazzaro), you’ll know how tethered it is to tradition, ancient mystique, the laws of the land. One early shot here could almost symbolise her art – there’s a thread of red yarn attached to someone which literally disappears right into the earth, and we realise that its owner, trying to tug it loose, is in heaven.
It belongs to the late love of the main character, a forlorn Englishman named Arthur (The Crown and Challengers star Josh O’Connor), who has made himself a base with a tin-roof shack in the Etruscan countryside, beside a ruined old wall. He’s a dowser, who can use a divining rod or just his natural antennae to sniff out relics underground, and as such has become the lynchpin of a small troupe of “tombaroli” – grave robbers.
Before any particular narrative pushes through, we amble about in a very Rohrwachy fashion with this burly clan, and meet their matriarch of sorts, a retired opera singer animated with sparkle, in a wheelchair, by Isabella Rossellini. They’re all delightfully bemused by Arthur, a persistent stranger in their midst with his filthy suits and imperfect Italian.
One woman in their circle (a lovely performance from Brazilian actress Carol Duarte) goes to the lengths of teaching him the language of gesticulation – those pinched fingers and hand wobbles Italians use as silent slang. In so doing, she puts a sweet gleam in his eye, perhaps the first sign he might relearn how to be alive.
