Lola On Film

Poetic, mischievous, perfectly formed, Alice Rohrwacher‘s gorgeous La chimera (2023) is very much a film unlike any other, although one can list visible and extensive influences from the best of Italian cinema, a mile long — the earthiness of Rossellini, the emotional detail of De Sica, the impishness of Fellini, the lyrical irreverence of Pasolini. Yet, it still maintains its own unusual, original beat, a magically potent inner logic. Then, there is also the expected fandom of the adventurous director towards one Indiana Jones.

Half fairytale, half heist, the film is a chimera in its own right, a hybrid consisting of parts that usually would not fit, but seem to exist together on screen, seamlessly — all the many characters fully involved in weaving the story of a cursed young British archeologist named Arthur (a perfectly cast, excellent Josh O’Connor) turned grave robber in 1980s Italy, and fresh out of prison, where he wound up for taking the fall for his ragtag group of home-grown tomb raiders (the tombaroli). He is also in deep grief, having lost his fiancé, Beniamina (Yile Yara Vianello), a mysterious death of which we are told little.

Rohrwacher conducts this tale with a great generosity of spirit, yet a keen eye for human folly, specifically of the avaricious kind. The black market in cultural artefacts of ancient times (in this case Etruscan) seems as dirty and shameless as it must be, and the writer/director makes sure we understand the bargain one makes when setting out to privately appropriate a collective history. There is a wonderfully chilly turn by the director’s sister, Alba Rohrwacher, playing the mastermind of an underground channel dealing in stolen antiquities, and in her words “estimating the inestimable.”

Now, Arthur is seen as a sorcerer of sorts by his thieving tribe, he divines places that hold hidden riches, sometimes by dowsing, sometimes through visions, and the way Rohrwacher frames this, we instinctively understand where his longing for the afterlife comes from, why his communion with the spirit world seems so natural and unsurprising. All the details we might not understand, they are merrily sung to us, as if in a cheered-up Greek tragedy or a Pirandellian dramatic intermezzo, only the chorus is not outside the goings-on, but fully participating in their unfolding. At one point the entire gang dresses up in full drag for the town Epiphany festivities, breaking the forth wall, and telling us the gist of the story so far.

The world of eighties Italy also seems to be a character in the film (art direction by Elisa Bentivegna), and one of equal standing, giving context to the zeitgeist of get-rich-quick schemes and purely monetary aspirations — along with the most vivid fashion (costumes by Loredana Buscemi), and a very real picture of the widespread poverty of rural Italy of the time.

Like all anti-heroes, Arthur is offered redemption, an option to forgo his dangerous path, here in the form of the spirited Italia (the lovely Carol Duarte), a live-in maid and vocal apprentice at the house of the mother of his deceased lover Beniamina — a warm yet formidable matriarch Flora (beautifully portrayed by Isabella Rossellini), who welcomes him to her home, wishing to somehow conjure the ghost of her child through Arthur’s palpable longing, to the chagrin of the rest of her amusing, plotting daughters. Arthur falls for Italia (metaphors abound), who has secrets too — she is a single mother of two, and the joy they both find in their blossoming romance spills vivaciously into the streets, as half of La chimera is devised as pure celebration of being alive, and of being in love, as well as a carefully crafted memento mori.

The other half of the story is, of course, the Grim Reaper, the realm of the dead, with its deceased souls holding on to everyday reminders of their living days, their own (un)remarkable mementos of when they were flesh. This inestimable treasure is what the grave robbers steal — and when the ending of this film arrives, you will be almost on the other side, in the underworld, too, rooting for the ghosts, entirely enchanted by the myriad twists and turns this story takes — so resembling the wild feel of the river of life, the way it actually flows through the world, told in a way only poetry is able to convey.

Along with an intuitive, brilliant cinematography by Hélène Louvart — an alchemical mix of both film stock and ratio, and the life-enhancing score (music consultant, Lina Cardillo), La chimera has one of the most cinematically masterful finales of a film I have ever seen. And what a glorious journey it has to it.

★★★★★

Author: ©Milana Vujkov