La Chimera

Vincenzo Nemolato

Pirro

A rather scruffy looking Josh O'Connor is "Arthur" who has found a way to make a living in rural Italy where he uses his unique gift with a divining rod - well a big twig, really - to uncover ancient artefacts from deep beneath the surface. He's not averse to a bit of grave robbing either - for which he has recently been imprisoned, and now he and his cohorts sell their stuff to "Spartaco" (Alba Rohrwacher) and via a rather unique technique, too! What's clear is that "Arthur" is getting over something fairly monumental in his life, and we get a clue to that when he visits the rather doting but blissfully ignorant and elderly "Flora" (Isabella Rossellini) at her increasingly dilapidated mansion house where the furniture is destined for the furnace and her family all know the secret, but dare not speak it. He, himself, inhabits a shanty-town style shed abutting the old city wall, his once proud linen suit now grubby and filthy and he is rarely without a cigarette. As the plot unfolds - aided by an agreeably sparing amount of dialogue - we start to get a sense that "Arthur" is actually coming to his senses after something akin to a concussion. The pieces of his life are slowly coming together again as he and his pals make the discovery of a lifetime, only for... It's a slowly paced film, but that works well - as do the infrequent but quite punchy comedic elements of the drama. There can be a comparison drawn between the gradual unearthing of the long lost relics and with his own re-realisation but it's all delivered with a brightness that keeps it from becoming downbeat or depressing. Director Alice Rohrwacher offers us a personal story tempered with a bit of mythology and a fair degree of ill-defined humanity that is compellingly incomplete in many ways. I reckon it might merit a second watch, there's plenty of nuanced writing here.