La Chimera
15
Why watch?
“It’s a treasure of a film with such an unusual style and plot. Aesthetically, the fact that it’s filmed in Italy means it was always destined to be a beauty. But it’s even more of a beauty thanks to some of the choices made by the director, Alice Rohrwacher, and cinematographer, Hélène Louvart. Every frame is packed with stories, from the people in the shots to the detailed frescoes and decaying treasures. Another choice that makes the film burst with life is the use of music which ranges from a fantastic folk balladeer who is a key narrator, to the more futuristic Kraftwerk. It is full of adventure and left me with a real sense of wonder and an appetite for more of the magic Rohrwacher is capable of.”
Martha Boyd,
Digital Marketing Coordinator
After being released from prison, Arthur returns home to be welcomed back to his gang of tombaroli, graverobbers who traffic the ancient artefacts they steal from the dead. Arthur has the ability to divine where lucrative graves are located, but he, his band and his extended family are all in search of something more, something that's maybe out of reach.
La Chimera is many things, part caper, part love story, part metaphor for modern Italy and so much more. Alice Rohrwacher once again returns to characters on the margins, unearthing intertwining stories of the ancient and the modern. It's a film bursting with energy, life; poignant, anarchic and magical.
Details
“No description of what happens in La Chimera can adequately convey what happens in La Chimera, which feels like watching an occurrence of ancient magic, from the point of view of the spell”
Jessica Kiang, Sight and Sound
“Alice Rohrwacher’s new film is a beguiling fantasy-comedy of lost love: garrulous, uproarious and celebratory in her absolutely distinctive style. It’s a movie bustling and teeming with life, with characters fighting, singing, thieving and breaking the fourth wall to address us directly.”
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“When we talk about “movie magic,” the first thing that comes to mind is often something like the bikes achieving liftoff in “E.T.” But it applies no less to Alice Rohrwacher’s wondrous “La Chimera,” a grubbily transcendent folk tale of a film that finds its enchantment buried in the ground.”
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press