As with 2018’s charming “Joyful as Lazzaro,” Rohrwacher methods you into pondering her movie is a pleasingly low-key hold. In reality, she’s saying one thing extra substantive and profound concerning 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 useless, 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 lady who’s not in his life for causes that finally turn out to be clear to him. He returns to her palatial, decaying residence, the place the elegant Isabella Rossellini guidelines over a pack of chattering, hovering younger girls who all name her “Mother,” pondering he’ll discover some solace there. Amusingly, he doesn’t, however Rossellini supplies a non-nonsense kindness, which contrasts with the passive-aggressive means she treats her flighty singing scholar/housekeeper, Italia (Carol Duarte).
Working with cinematographer Hélène Louvart, whose movies embody “Joyful as Lazzaro” and Eliza Hittman’s “Seaside Rats” and “By no means Hardly ever Typically All the time,” Rohrwacher bathes the movie in a gauzy haze, creating the feeling that that is all an ethereal fantasy. Once we first see Arthur, he’s asleep on a practice; an attendant wakes him and teasingly asks if he was dreaming, prompting the younger girls 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 finally turn out to be extra speedy and concrete. Typically this doesn’t work, as in Rohrwacher’s use of slapsticky, sped-up sequences, an homage to the type of silent movies which feels too quirky and misplaced. Equally, the side ratio typically modifications, creating an pointless distraction. However for essentially the most half, she casts a spell.
