La Chimera (2023) – A. Rohrwacher
Director Alice Rohrwacher’s most recent feature and
her first since her breakthrough with Happy as Lazzaro (2018). (She seems to make a lot of shorts). La Chimera feels very European (Rohrwacher is
Italian), even if it stars British Josh O’Connor (he barely speaks and usually
in broken Italian). Isabella Rossellini plays a matriarch (the mother of O’Connor’s
lost girlfriend). As in Lazzaro, there’s a communal feel to the casting, with a
lot of amateurs, possibly non-actors, in bit parts or just part of the gang. Is
this Fellini-esque? Rohrwacher also seems to enjoy gazing at faces. The blurb
at iMDb seems to position this as some sort of arthouse Indiana Jones but I have
to tell you that even though O’Connor plays a sort of archeologist (or perhaps
just a graverobber), this is not that (although there are some beautiful
arthouse shots!). Instead of action, we get an elusive meditation on our
connections to the past, both cultural (as in the hunt for artefacts or lost treasures)
and personal (as in returning to one’s old haunts or dwelling in one’s thoughts
about people who have passed). Not so much bringing the past to light in the
present but perhaps escaping to the past, not necessarily but especially one’s
own past, not an updated version? But that’s just one of the themes and ideas
free-floating through the film. Rohrwacher again toys with magical realism with
O’Connor also a sort of dowser for graves, overcome when near treasure-filled hollows
in the ground. But how do these lost souls feel about giving up their riches?
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