La Chimera

Carol Duarte and Josh O'Connor

No film has given me as much pleasure this year than Alice Rohrwacher's La Chimera, her fourth feature. It is her richest, most assured work yet and one in which the buried past is very much alive. Josh O'Connor plays Arthur, a scruffy archaeologist who we meet just after he has been released from prison for illegally excavating Etruscan artifacts. Arthur has been traumatized by the loss of his lady love, Benjamina, who haunts his dreams and memories. He visits Flora (Isabella Rossellini), Benjamina's mother, living in a beautiful, but decaying villa and is greeted like a prodigal son. His old gang wants to entice him back to his former criminal life, but he initially rejects them. He attracts the romantic attentions of Flora's servant, Italia (Carol Duarte), who harbors at least two secrets of her own.

Italia is locked into a sickly master-slave relationship with Flora. Flora is ostensibly giving Italia vocal lessons, but Italia has little vocal talent and is much put upon. Arthur finally yields to his old gangs' entreaties and we discover his secret gift, divination. Soon the gang are once again hauling bags of ancient pottery, baubles, and statues to Spartaco, a mysterious fence who uses a veterinary hospital as cover. Things end badly for Arthur who is more in thrall to his memories and dreams than practical reality. Arthur displays, as Neil Young once sang, that it is easy to get buried in the past. Rohrwacher closes the book on her protagonist with an ending that bears comparison to Poe's The Cask of Amontillado in its entwinement of theme with narrative structure.

Josh O'Connor and Alba Rohrwacher

What strikes me most in retrospect is how light on its feet La Chimera is. It has a much denser plot than I have let on, a large cast, and many weighty themes, but seems as delicious and airy as a properly made souffle. Rohrwacher is graced with an affectionate sense of humor that is more observational and impressionistic than focused on yucks. Her ability to get relaxed and ingratiating performances from both seasoned pros and amateurs is impressive. She has been typed as a practitioner of magical realism, but that pigeon hole reduces the scope of her films. There is plenty of local color and the magic of the everyday in La Chimera, particularly the epiphany parade, but much else. On one level, the film could be read as a critique of capitalism with the gang, constantly being surveilled, viewed as a collective of marginalized misfits reduced to scavenging.

Happily, La Chimera is not one thing or another but contains multitudes. The films use of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo hips us to a mythological aspect, Arthur as Orpheus and Benjamina as Eurydice. Benjamina plucks a thread like Ariadne and another (King) Arthur was also entranced by chimerical visions. In addition, the film can also be viewed as a meditation on the eternal modes of expression utilized by our species, be it language, sign language, theater, crafts, sculpture or music. All contain wisdom of the past that is conveyed into the future through formalistic vessels. Valentino Santagati drops into the film from time to time singing a Ballad of Arthur. He functions like a comic chorus much as Jonathan Richmond did in There's Something About Mary. It is touches like this that keep La Chimera from ever seeming top heavy. It is a stone cold masterpiece, though.