2024 Top Ten List #5 La Chimera

Director Alice Rohrwacher

sisters Alice and Alba Rohrwacher

Josh O'Connor on the set with the director

Josh O'Connor, Alice Rohrwacher, and Isabella Rossellini

Isabella Rossellini with the Rohrwacher sisters

LA CHIMERA             A                                                                                                            Italy  France Switzerland  (130 mi)  2023

In the place where I grew up, I often heard stories of secret discoveries, clandestine excavations and mysterious adventures.  It was enough to stay in a bar late at night, or stop in a patch of countryside to hear about that guy who had uncovered a Villanovan tomb with his tractor, or the other guy who digging at night near the necropolis had found such a long gold necklace to be able to surround a house, and yet another who had become rich in Switzerland by selling an Etruscan vase that he had found in the garden.  Stories of skeletons and ghosts, of escapes and darkness.  The life around me was made up of several parts: a sunny, contemporary, busy one, and a nocturnal, mysterious, secret one.  There were many layers, and we all experienced them: it was enough to dig a few centimeters into the earth and a fragment of an artefact, made by other hands, appeared among the stones.  How long had he been looking at me?  It was enough to go to the nearby stables and cellars to realize that those places had been something else, they were perhaps Etruscan tombs, refuges from other times, sacred places.  This closeness between the sacred and the profane, between death and life, which characterized all the years of my growth, has always fascinated me and given my gaze a measure.  This is why I decided to finally make a film that tells this layered plot, this relationship between two worlds, probably the last piece of a triptych on a territory that questions a central question: what to do with the past?  Death is something that our society forces us to face individually, at most within a family.  Instead, comparing myself with the past, I saw an idea of ​​death integrated into life and the community.

—Alice Rohrwacher

A wondrous film that defies description, seemingly frozen in time, full of nostalgia and love for beauty in all its forms, blurring the boundaries of the ancient and the modern until they are almost indistinguishable, finally settling on a state of mind where this film seems to exist, somewhere between the dreamy and the visionary, as one senses things are not altogether real, yet somewhat magical, while also lingering in the poverty of everyday existence of rural Italy, much like the lyrical films of Pietro Marcello, who is credited as one of the inspirations behind this film, collecting testimonies with the director when initially planning a documentary, while also working together on the collective film FUTURA (2021).  Who would think a film about grave robbers could have so much impact?  Dressed in sensual imagery, the film constantly surprises, offering intrigue in a profound, sometimes incomprehensible way, feeling like an ode to Tuscany, a land filled with untold secrets, the stomping grounds of the Taviani brothers, makers of PADRE PADRONE (1977), a pastoral homage to Italian heritage that won the Cannes Palme D’Or (1st prize), the almost never seen IL PRATO (1979), which launched the career of Isabella Rossellini, while the magical THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS (1982) may arguably be their best work.  Rohrwacher, who studied literature and philosophy at the University of Turin, has increasingly deployed myth and allegory to tell her stories.  Opening in a dream sequence, one of several recurring sequences that we see, two young lovers are frolicking with a kind of unbridled joy, bathed in a sea of light, as she whispers to him “Have you noticed the sun is following us?”  This is our introduction to Beniamina, a beautiful blond woman with a tattoo of the sun on her shoulder played by Yile Yara Vianello, the star of Rohrwacher’s first feature CORPO CELESTE (2011), whose dreamlike presence is summoned by Arthur (Josh O’Connor), a somewhat sullen character known as the Englishman, or “the foreigner,” a character shrouded in mystery, but slowly a life story unfolds around him, as he’s recently released from prison on unspecified charges, traveling by train to return back to his home, forever haunted by her ghostly memory, as she seems to have drawn him to Tuscany.  They reflect the ill-fated mythological fable of Orpheus and Eurydice (Orpheus and Eurydice: A Tragic Love Story), young and in love, seemingly inseparable, where she is eventually trapped behind in the underworld, forever destined to roam in the darkness.  A tale of love, loss, and the innocence of youth, Rohrwacher is one of the best new talents working today, employing an international cast, where there is always an exploration of the feminine dimension, with several different women intersecting Arthur’s existential path, adding undoubted weight, yet her warm humanism is a direct descendant of the neorealism of Fellini and De Sica, infusing her films with an element of magical realism, subverting all expectations with such a disjointed narrative.  This is the last part of her trilogy examining the Italian identity through a relationship with its past, following The Wonders (Le meraviglie) (2014) and Happy As Lazzaro (Lazzaro Felice) (2018), adding an unmistakable flourish of cinematic poetry that is nothing less than enticing, cloaked in a patina of melancholy, beautifully shot in a combination of Super 16mm, 16mm, and 35mm by French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, who has worked with this director since the beginning, also known for her work with Agnès Varda in The Beaches of Agnès (Les plages d'Agnès) (2008), also Eliza Hittman in Beach Rats (2017) and 2020 Top Ten List #5 Never Rarely Sometimes Always.  Once back home, Arthur’s first order of business is paying a visit to Beniamina’s mother Flora (none other than Isabella Rossellini in a wheelchair), the closest thing he has to a motherly figure, a former opera singer and aging aristocrat whose dilapidated mansion has seen better days, with water dripping from the ceiling, who now supports herself as a music teacher, where her connection to the ethereal comes from her unique understanding of sacred music, yet she’s surrounded by the overlapping dialogue of vulture-like daughters and granddaughters who can’t wait to sell her home and push her into a nursing facility so they won’t have to care for her any longer.  But they keep up the pretense of honor and respectability, paying her visible respect in her presence, while undermining her every chance they get.  This acidic comment on the unscrupulous society the world has become offers insight into the world of today, as people who desecrate the graves of the dead are only thinking about themselves in the present, with little understanding or connection to their historical past.  Rohrwacher is so good at depicting the life of the peasants of her region, told with the poetic power of her vision, as it’s all about an interplay and interactive dialogue with history.  To the Etruscans, for instance, birds in flight represent our destiny, while in a surreal moment we find the protagonist chatting with dead souls in search of their looted relics. 

Through Flora Arthur meets Italia, Carol Duarte, a Brazilian actress previously seen playing Euridice in the barely seen Karim Aïnouz film 2019 Top Ten List #4 Invisible Life (A Vida Invisível), bringing to the screen an imposing spirit with great tenacity, where their relationship is soon cloaked in romance.  She appears to be a tone-deaf music student who pays for her services by being Flora’s attentive live-in servant who is despised and ridiculed by Flora’s daughters, who dismissively order her around, yet her strength of will stands out as she perseveres while secretly housing two small children, showing surprising resiliency, with Arthur taking notice, as she offers him a crash course in Italian that comically resembles a gestural sign language.  One of the early scenes of note is Flora emphasizing to Italia the depth of feeling needed when having a confessional conversation with God in the Mozart aria, Mozart: "Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio" - Sabine Devieilhe - YouTube (7:07), one of the more difficult arias Mozart ever wrote, with the lyric, “Let me explain, oh God, what my grief is!  But fate has condemned me to weep and stay silent.”  The setting is a period piece from an impoverished Tuscany in the 1980’s, with its bucolic landscapes and undisturbed natural beauty, as Arthur returns to the small town of Riparbella on the Tyrrhenian Sea, reluctantly rejoining his small band of grave robbers known as the “tambaroli,” who pretend to make their living as farmers and entertainers, but instead pilfer the area’s sacred tombs of the ancient Etruscans searching for artifacts and ornaments to sell on the black market, hoping to one day strike it rich.  Other than Arthur, they are not archeologists or historians, but are simply poor.  Predecessors to the Romans, the Etruscans (The Etruscans, an introduction) dedicated their art and their craftsmanship to the world of the dead, while this ragtag group of jesters and musicians are like a vagabond theater troupe, reminiscent of the circus people in Fellini’s LA STRADA (1954), especially their wildly enthusiastic Epiphany Day parade, La Chimera Film Clip | OIFF 2023 - YouTube (1:45).  It turns out they actually left Arthur behind earlier, which accounts for his arrest, but they need him due to his inexplicable talent in using a dowser to divine the precise location of these buried treasures, which aren’t just graves, but shrines and relics left in underground caves and tunnels.  In the small town where Rohrwacher grew up, she recalls these local thieves would come into local bars and café’s to brag about their adventures, providing the inspiration for the film, drawing parallels to Fellini’s I Vitelloni (1953) and Il Bidone (1955), yet rather than drenched in the neorealism of the 1950’s, the director continually offers startling new revelations in this modern era fable, creating a positively enchanting film, which is like a road movie with its many twists and diversions, taking us places where we have never been.  During these misadventures, Arthur continues to be drawn back to thoughts of Beniamina, a mystery woman who is either absent or has disappeared, perhaps even dead, with no real explanation of what happened, feeling more like a mirage (thus the title), which is how the entire film plays out, as we largely sense rather than understand the unspoken mysteries that are all around us.  The film does not have one overarching message, but can be thought of in infinite ways, developing so many different themes, like love, friendship, property law, traditions, the art trade, how to deal with the past, mourning and oppression, and finally, the role of myths, dreams, and the supernatural in our daily lives.  People have different ways of relating to the past, those who plunder and ignore history, or those who instead try to give new life to forgotten places.  To the tambaroli of the 70’s and 80’s, they believe the treasures of the Etruscans are a legacy bequeathed to them, where that desecration is emptied of its meaning.  They sell their goods to an unseen art dealer known as Spartaco, who operates at cargo ports with all the necessary equipment, like excavators, construction cranes, and forklifts, eventually finding their way to museums for public display, apparently with no questions asked, where history is literally for sale when buyers are asked to “estimate the inestimable.”  The group is amusingly contacted by one of Spartaco’s sexually provocative employees acting as a liaison, Melodie, played by Lou Roy-Lecollinet, so mesmerizing in Arnaud Desplechin’s 2015 Top Ten Films #7 My Golden Days (Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse), who ultimately betrays them.  Punctuated by excerpts from Monteverdi’s Orpheus, Monteverdi: L'Orfeo - Prologue - YouTube (7:07), which adds weight and dimension, much of this feels like a pirate adventure, eloquently combining archaeological scenarios with unmissable views of building and industrial construction sites, exposing a world on the verge of modernization, yet there is also an accompanying love story in both the present and the past that adds a deeper layer of uncovered mystery, where the past is literally calling out to us to pay attention, but these messages are largely ignored.     

The beauty of the film is how it so seamlessly interweaves myths and legend as well as larger ideas about the world of the living and the world of the dead, with suggestions that the old ways never die, all coming together in the delicate poetry of an inexplicable romance, using eclectic musical styles ranging from baroque, opera, classical, to modern electronic, where the music fits well with the content, but it’s nothing short of brilliant when a troubadour breaks out into song, a heroic ballad of Arthur and his band, as the story we are watching about the tambaroli suddenly plays out like musical theater, or an outdoor puppet show, as the sound of a triangle introduces a singer on guitar who casts a bewitching spell, bringing extreme passion into their exploits.  Sometimes Rohrwacher will speed up or slow down footage for comedic or dramatic impact, have characters speak directly to the camera, while other times she’ll literally flip the image on its head.  Things seem to randomly occur, paying little regard to any traditional plot structure, yet the director feels more focused here, accumulating more complexity and depth by creating a dialogue with the past, discovering lost relics that were only meant to be experienced by the dead, so eloquently described by the refrain, “You were not meant for human eyes.”  That is such a powerful Etruscan sentiment, where the world of art is an invaluable human resource, yet the flipside is the greedy commerce aspect, with little connection to the very soul of art, or the language it speaks, yet this film connects us in so many mysterious ways.  With the director examining Italy’s postwar transition to modernity, one must ask why these treasures remained untouched for two thousand years.  When did people stop seeing their history through art, or lose their faith in the sacred, instead viewing objects only for their economic value?  As Arthur begins to question the morality of his actions, the film asks us to change our own viewpoint and look below the surface, much like Marcello’s Scarlet (L’envol) (2022), as poetry should be the tool that frees characters from the weight of history.  The ensemble acting is a highlight, featuring emphatically strong performances, where the presence of Isabella Rossellini is simply a treat for the eyes, yet Rohrwacher introduces her older sister Alba in such a compelling way, as she comes to represent the heart of dishonesty in contemporary culture, becoming a kaleidoscopic mosaic that is so beautifully woven together.  This film was surprisingly overlooked at the Cannes Film Festival, premiering on the final day, winning no awards, yet may be the director’s crowning achievement, potentially with a larger impact than all the other awarded films, yet fewer will see it, as it strives for the heights of such transcendent works as Tarkovsky’s ANDREI RUBLEV (1966), a perfect blend of history and art, though this feels a bit like Icarus flying too close to the sun, getting scorched by his own ambition.  The cradle of ancient civilization comes alive in this film, yet questions its place in the postwar twentieth century, as materialist profiteering stands in stark contrast to spirituality and religion.  Today there is a market for ancient works of art, but largely through illicit trafficking, in particular archaeological sites that have been neglected or abandoned.  In Italy, artifacts of historic value belong to the state, yet art trafficking is a larger problem than drug trafficking, with much less risk, though harder to prosecute, as the wheels of justice spin very slowly.  Arthur is different from the rest of them in that he belongs neither to the territory nor to the gang.  For him, there’s always some trepidation about what lies underneath.  What he seeks is neither profit, money, or adventure, but something else altogether, driven by a deeper need, as the past and present, reality and myth, all blur in Arthur’s quest for the unobtainable, becoming a guardian of art in pursuit of something he has lost, like opening a door to the afterlife, as myths reveal a profound truth, that humankind is in search of its soul that was lost long ago.  The exquisite sympathy of the final moments is profoundly moving, as the meandering structure all comes together in a cohesive whole, overflowing with symbolism, where the seemingly random side journeys all make sense, offering unexpected implications, creating a powerful yet carefully choreographed accumulative effect that is unforgettable, growing richer for the meticulous detail, but also the force of its message.  It’s not just death, but an idea of what lies beyond that is fully integrated into life, becoming a sacred place, like the memory of a lost love, where there are so many layers to this film, and so much joy, challenging viewers into the cavernous regions of our own souls, reminding us what a touching and violent thing humanity is, guided by a careful hand at the helm, as Rohrwacher may stand alone in contemporary European cinema, lovingly conveying the complexity of character while also knowing how to evoke a deeper meaning of the everyday.  This is a film that flies in the face of so-called perfection, inspired by a road not taken, where it’s the flaws and imperfections, and the jagged edges that make it so compellingly human. 

2015 Top Ten Films #7 My Golden Days (Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse)

MY GOLDEN DAYS (Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse)                  A-            
France  (120 mi)  2015  ‘Scope  d:  Arnaud Desplechin 

While not exactly a prequel, but a reimagining of an original story used in an earlier film, MY SEX LIFE…OR HOW I GOT INTO AN ARGUMENT (1996), which was a sprawling three-hour French relationship talkathon, while in this film Desplechin has resurrected the central character of Paul Dédalus, played nineteen years apart in both films by Mathieu Amalric, who opens the film as a present day character remembering events occurring in the late 80’s and early 90’s, where a more accurate French title translates to Three Remembrances of My Youth.  Winner of the SACD Prize (Best Screenplay) in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes, the director (along with Julie Peyr) has written a memory play that explores the Proustian autobiographical memories of the Dédalus character from childhood through adolescence, told in three segments, where the first two, Childhood and Russia, preface a larger story entitled Esther that blends into the early periods of MY SEX LIFE, a film that falls within a great tradition of French coming-of age-films, having made some of the best, including Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), Téchiné’s Wild Reeds (Les Roseaux Sauvages) (1994), and Assayas’s Cold Water (L’eau Froide) (1994).  The brief opening sequences are actually the weakest in the entire film, as the viewer doesn’t have a handle yet on Paul Dédalus, or even a connection to the earlier film.  Instead he’s seen as a middle-aged man leaving his lover, returning to Paris for a government post in Foreign Affairs after spending a decade working as a scholar and anthropologist in Tajikistan.  It’s only at the airport where he’s stopped and questioned, interrogated by a French official, dutifully performed by Resnais regular André Dussollier, with questions about his passport, which shifts the film into a lengthy flashback sequence, often expressed through a round (iris) frame, a holdover technique from the Silent era, suggesting memories of long ago, recounting three seminal moments from his past.  Like Truffaut’s young ruffian alter-ego character Antoine Doinel, a petrified 11-year old Paul Dédalus (Antoine Bui) also ran away from his home in Roubaix escaping from his deranged mother, depicted in a panicked German Expressionist horror scene where he holds her off with a knife (shadows appearing on a staircase), warning her not to come any closer, before running away to his kindly great-aunt Rose, Françoise Lebrun, who played Veronika in The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1973), looking better than ever, observed by a curious young Paul as the affectionate recipient of a sweet lesbian kiss.  While he’s sad to learn of his mother’s suicide shortly thereafter (claiming he never loved her), it has a permanent effect on his emotionally depressed father (Olivier Rabourdin), whose mind is elsewhere and is unable to look after his children, where Paul along with his sister and younger brother share their formative teenage years raising themselves. 

However, this does not account for why there is another Paul Dédalus living in Australia with a registered passport using the same birthdate and birthplace.  For that, the scene shifts to Russia, where Paul takes an eventful student high school trip to Minsk in the USSR as an idealistic 16-year old, now played by Quentin Dolmaire, turning into an amateur spy thriller when he along with his Jewish friend Marc (Elyot Milshtein) agree to help the Refuseniks (Refuseniks - Jewish Virtual Library), sneaking away from a student tour of the National Arts Museum to help a group of Russian Jews denied permission to leave the country, providing secret packages filled with money, while Paul goes so far as to offer his passport, allowing someone else to assume his identity.  To cover for his own lost passport, he gives himself a black eye and claims he was mugged and his passport stolen.  Filled with plenty of Cold War tension, including bribing a suspicious police officer that stops them with a pack of American cigarettes, the young boys actually pull it off, blending into his teenage years where he’s with his sister Delphine (Lily Taieb) and brother Ivan (Raphaël Cohen) watching television footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which Paul finds sad as “I can see my childhood ending.”  But most of all he remembers Esther, played by Lou Roy-Lecollinet, an absolute delight as the girl of his dreams, the beauty of his eye, and his soulmate, something he realizes from the moment he sets eyes on her, as she’s “the one,” a dazzling beauty who is mature beyond her years, amusingly aware of the effect she has on men, and couldn’t care less what others think of her, an earlier version of the same character played by Emmanuelle Devos in MY SEX LIFE.  Inviting her to come to a party at their father’s house (believing he is away), Desplechin perfectly frames her entrance, shifting to slow motion with her initial appearance, where celestial music honors her as the Goddess of Love and Beauty.  The same device is used several times, each time more amusing than the next, as this is exactly how high school boys envision their first love.  They’re not just “in love,” but the moon and the stars orbit around her very presence.  Paul has a clever way of showing his interest, especially when she shows up with somebody else, which is to ignore her while she dances with all the other guys, staring ponderously at her throughout, waiting until the guy she came with decides to leave, expecting to take her home, but she insists upon staying, rudely telling him to scram.  Thus begins the long journey of a tumultuous decade-long love affair, but that night, all he does is walk her home, romantically walking through the city streets just before daybreak, awkwardly trying to make clever conversation, confessing whatever comes out of his mouth, which she finds amusing, ending the night with the cinematic perfection of a gentle kiss, conveying in our eyes exactly how he feels and just what she means to him. 

These two, Roy-Lecollinet and Dolmaire, both first time actors, literally light up the screen, where their ecstatic combustible energy is something to savor, as Esther is viewed as royalty, where every male in the vicinity is attracted to her, so she quickly learns to fend them off and has become a master in the art of the put-down, showing an instant disdain for people that get on her nerves, believing life is too short for people to waste her time, but she has the whole world beckoning her, wanting to be with her.  Initially Paul appears to have little chance, spending his time traveling back and forth between Roubaix and Paris, where it turns out absence makes the heart grow fonder.  In an era before social media, where now kids routinely send hundreds of text messages every day, the preferred technique back in the day was writing letters, pouring out one’s heart and soul in confessional outpourings of love (which are read directly into the camera), where every spare moment is dedicated to an idyllic “her,” keeping her foremost on his mind even as he pursues his Parisian studies and a life as an academic, where their exchanges are electric, literally flowing with excitement and energy when they meet, exhibiting all the signs of a sweetness of youth, becoming passionate lovers before long, where they can’t live without each other.  The beauty of this film is really the playfulness of Desplechin’s cinematic presentation, the way he mixes it up, showing plenty of offbeat humor, tenderness, moments of despair, crude awakenings, and a world where nothing makes sense except each other, but where their journey together is anything but smooth as she fights to maintain her fiery independence, often shown facing straight into the camera with a cigarette in her hand, where she’s literally posing for the audience, becoming a snapshot in time.  On again, off again, she’s put off by the extent of his absences, and freely acknowledges she sleeps with other guys, where they go through a series of breakups and reconciliations, but Paul has a way of charming the pants off her (which happens literally with another woman in the film), where she loves the way he’ll poetically describe a work of art, like one of his favorite paintings, putting her somewhere in the center of its majestic beauty, a sacred, unreachable perfection, while he sees himself as some lonely figure off to the side, but perhaps the only thing in the frame alert enough to notice the power of her staggering presence.  It’s a fascinating free-wheeling style that matches the furious pace of his earlier film, literally painting a window into their damaged souls where they have such a special chemistry together that is rare in films today.  With a throbbing soundtrack that matches the elevated emotional reach of the film, there’s something bewitching and enchanting about it, where Desplechin’s masterful direction breathes life into an age-old Romeo and Juliet love story, becoming intensely personal, fiercely sincere, especially a scene late in the film, with tinges of sadness when looked back upon because it never lasted, but the thoughtfulness and thorough detail of the remembrances are a brilliant ode to youth, as illuminating as they are intoxicating.