Josh O’Connor, Carol Duarte, Vincenzo Nemolato, Alba Rohrwacher, Isabella Rossellini
“A joyous, masterful work of folk magic” (Sight & Sound), La Chimera is a captivating fable of lost love and an ethereal spiritual journey. The new film from Alice Rohrwacher (Happy As Lazzaro, The Wonders), critically lauded after its Cannes premiere, it follows a melancholic British archaeologist caught up in the illegal trafficking of ancient finds.
Riparbella, Tuscany, early ’80s. An Englishman in a grimy linen suit, Arthur (a superb Josh O’Connor) has just been released from prison. Yearning for his old lover, Beniamina, the daughter of an ageing local aristocrat (Isabella Rossellini), he falls in with a group of tombaroli (tomb robbers), a rowdy, Fellini-esque crew of twentysomethings who claim to work as farmers and entertainers, but instead pilfer the area’s ancient burial sites for Etruscan earthenware and ornaments to sell on the black market.
Located halfway between the dead and the living, continuing Rohrwacher’s project of mining and mythologising of her country’s past, La Chimera creates its own wild, improbable fictional space and draws you inside and under its spell. Romantic and wayward, with a wonderful central performance by O’Connor and beautifully shot by Hélène Louvart, it’s an entirely bewitching film – an ode to the power and fragility of lovely things, and a cautionary tale about how easily they may be lost.