La Chimera
As a band of thieving tombaroli look for easy wealth with black market grave and archeological plunderings, Arthur (Josh O’Connor, “God’s Own Country,” Emma.”), their mystical English dowser, will search everywhere, including the afterlife, for Beniamena (Yile Yara Vianello), his lost love. They are all attempting to find that elusive thing that will always exceed their grasp, “La Chimera.”
Laura's Review: B
Writer/director Alice Rohrwacher ("The Wonders," "Le Pupille") seems to pull her films from the very fabric of Italy - its earth, its people and its history. She balances her English lead with the Italian cinematic heritage of Isabella Rossellini, here playing Flora, the mother of the missing woman whose other progeny are resentful of the favoritism she affords Arthur.
She is the first person he visits after a release from prison, despite pleas from Pirro (Vincenzo Nemolato) to join the other tombaroli for a toast. He finds newcomer Italia (Carol Duarte) in the act of breaking up a chair for the fire in the cold and crumbling estate. Ostensibly Flora’s singing student, we will discover both women are using the other, Flora utilizing the younger woman as a servant while Italia hides her young daughter Colombina (Julia Vella) and her infant on the premises.
This is but one of the many off ramps Rohrwacher takes during her meandering, tale of mischievous thieves and their lovelorn leader, who panics when he returns to the tin shack he’s made into his home and finds his stash of Etruscan tomb objects missing. Turns out his friends have stored them, alarmed when local police searched his premises, and when they follow him on his next outing while he’s looking for a door to the afterlife they find another underground tomb.
The band will create a ballad, ‘The Poor Tombaroli: The Adventures of Arthur the Dowser.’ There will be love affairs, Pirro becoming enamored of Melodie (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), the bleached blonde associate of the mysterious Spartaco (Alba Rohrwacher), who fences their finds and who paid for Arthur’s release. And while he dreams of Beniamena, Arthur will begin to fall for Italia, whose crash course in Italian for him, a study in gestures, is one of the film’s comedic highlights. But after Arthur gets jealous of Italia at a dance and begins to walk her home, the pull of the earth calls and she is horrified by how he makes his living. This last dig will prove the group’s most magnificent trove as well as Arthur’s awakening, a rebellious act followed by a literal dream come to life with the pulling of a string.
O’Connor, soon to be seen in the upcoming “Challengers,” is the film’s heartsick dreamer, his hangdog expression in stark contrast to his traveling circus of friends, his rare smile laced with melancholy. Rohrwacher’s longstanding director of photography Hélène Louvart follows them along ancient, cloistered streets as they perform for onlookers, Mario (Gian Piero Capretto) performing magic, and the rest reveling in drag. The ancient world they inhabit is reflected in the cracks in the murals of Flora’s stone walls and Reparbella’s abandoned train station, repurposed as Italia’s latest squat, only Spartaco’s world offering an ironic glimpse of the modern. “La Chimera” is a dream scattered amidst the earth and the stars.
Robin's Review: B
Neon releases "La Chimera" in theaters on 4/12/24. Click here for theaters and tickets.
