Jump on the ride and see where La Chimera takes you
In the oddball Italian language movie La Chimera British actor Josh O’Connor, who won awards as Prince Charles in the television series The Crown, does just what the British Empire was founded upon: pinches things that don’t belong to him.
In the oddball Italian language movie La Chimera British actor Josh O’Connor, who won awards as Prince Charles in the television series The Crown, does just what the British Empire was founded upon: pinches things that don’t belong to him.
In this case it’s stealing artefacts from tombs and temples in Tuscany, Italy, in the 1980s. Arthur (O’Connor, who learned Italian for the role) is an archaeological scholar who has fallen on bad times and hooked up with a bunch of local grave robbers.
He looks like Anthony Andrews’ Sebastian Flyte towards the end of the 1981 TV masterpiece Brideshead Revisited: dirty white suit, a few days’ growth. He’s tall, taciturn and quick to anger. O’Connor fits the role well.
One of the reasons is a lost love, Beniamina (Yile Vianello), who we see in flashbacks. Arthur remains on good terms with her unwealthy aristocrat mother (Isabella Rossellini), who gives singing lessons. Her current student, Italia (Brazilian actor Carol Duarte), takes a fancy to Arthur.
Arthur uses a divining rod to find buried tombs. His motley crew think he has “a gift for finding lost things”. How he lost Beniamina is one of the puzzles of this enigmatic comedy-drama. Whether Italia will find him is another.
This film is written and directed by Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher (her previous feature, Happy as Lazzaro, won a script award at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival) and is characteristic of her idiosyncratic, slightly surreal style.
In one scene, a female character speaks to camera about Italian machismo. In others, a musician strums a guitar in the background and sings the plot.
The titular La Chimera may be the mythical monster or an unrealisable dream or both.
I like ambiguous films — and I do have an is-that-what-it’s-about? theory on this one, centred on our souls, but overall it doesn’t quite work for me. It’s a film where you buy a ticket to no predetermined destination, jump on for the ride and see where it takes you.
La Chimera (M)
Italian language with English subtitles
132 minutes
In cinemas. Advance screenings April 6-7 ahead of national release April 11
