11/09/24

Amazon Prime

We’re in Tuscany, some time in the 1980s. Dishevelled Englishman Arthur (Josh O’Connor) is sensitive, clever, sweet and engaging. He’s also a grave robber, recently released from an Italian prison and about to head right back to his life of crime.

First though, he has an important visit to make – to the grand but crumbling estate that is home to the aged Flora (Isabella Rossellini). Despite her gaggle of adult daughters’ cacophonous protestations, Flora is Arthur’s biggest champion. Years back, when he was a respectable archaeologist, he was in love with her other daughter, Beniamina (Yile Yara Vianello), now deceased. The bereaved duo cling to their mutual connection.

In fact, Arthur’s yearning for Beniamina is so intense that it allows him to transcend the barriers between past and present. With a dowsing rod, he can pinpoint the long-lost tombs of the Estruscan dead with unerring accuracy. He’s the natural leader of this band of thieves.

The moral questions raised are unsettling. Stealing trinkets from corpses seems inherently wrong, but Arthur and his troubadour friends are homeless, living in poverty. What good are treasures lying in the ground? What’s wrong with living people using them to earn a crust? The rich buyers – whom we glimpse at an exclusive auction – will never go to jail, but they’re the ones profiteering from the poor men’s crimes, turning a blind eye to the items’ provenance. After all, in his old profession, Arthur’s findings were deemed legitimate and sold to museums. Is there really any difference?

But then Arthur begins to fall for Italia (Carol Duarte), Flora’s singing-student-slash-maid. The future is beckoning. Can he stop looking back?

Alice Rohrwacher’s film is a panoply of oxymorons: a firmly realistic supernatural tale; bleakly comic; slow and exciting. Driven entirely by its own logic, there are surprises at every turn, but they all make sense within the story. The Tuscan landscape is beautifully evoked by cinematographer Hélène Louvart, and there’s an unnerving folksy element, caught in the songs and celebrations of the tomb raiders.

But it’s O’Connor’s fine central performance that really makes La Chimera. He embodies the quiet desperation the title connotes, faithful to his impossible quest.

4.1 stars

Susan Singfield