As with 2018’s charming “Pleased as Lazzaro,” Rohrwacher tips you into considering her movie is a pleasingly low-key cling. In reality, she’s saying one thing extra substantive and profound in regards to the tug of historical past—of centuries of tradition in addition to a newly misplaced love.
Josh O’Connor’s Arthur is the hangdog robber who feels each forces pulling on him equally. He’s an Englishman in rural Italy with a preternatural present for sniffing out hidden Etruscan artifacts which were buried with the lifeless, following his instincts in a trancelike state. The ragtag band of tombaroli who wander behind him with nice expectations provides to the movie’s vibe of percolating, playful chaos.
However Arthur is additionally distracted by visions of Beniamina, the bewitching younger girl who’s now not in his life for causes that finally change into clear to him. He returns to her palatial, decaying dwelling, the place the elegant Isabella Rossellini guidelines over a pack of chattering, hovering younger ladies who all name her “Mother,” considering he’ll discover some solace there. Amusingly, he doesn’t, however Rossellini offers a non-nonsense kindness, which contrasts with the passive-aggressive manner she treats her flighty singing scholar/housekeeper, Italia (Carol Duarte).
Working with cinematographer Hélène Louvart, whose movies embody “Pleased as Lazzaro” and Eliza Hittman’s “Seaside Rats” and “By no means Hardly ever Generally At all times,” Rohrwacher bathes the movie in a gauzy haze, creating the feeling that that is all an ethereal fantasy. After we first see Arthur, he’s asleep on a practice; an attendant wakes him and teasingly asks if he was dreaming, prompting the younger ladies reverse him within the automobile to giggle. This unreliable vibe permeates “La Chimera,” inflicting us to query at all times what’s actual, even because the stakes in the end change into extra speedy and concrete. Generally this doesn’t work, as in Rohrwacher’s use of slapsticky, sped-up sequences, an homage to the fashion of silent movies which feels too quirky and misplaced. Equally, the side ratio usually adjustments, creating an pointless distraction. However for probably the most half, she casts a spell.