Alice Rohrwacher’s first feature since the widely acclaimed Happy As Lazzaro five years ago is an exhilaratingly unpredictable, mysterious, rough and tumble tale of a disheveled English tomb raider living on the margins amongst a roisterous group of Italian bohemians: singers, smugglers, peasants and petty thieves. Even in this rum company Arthur (Josh O’Connor) is an odd duck, but he’s at the heart of their operations because he has the gift of divination: he sniffs out ancient Etruscan graves, and with them treasure troves of artifacts buried with the dead.
Rohrwacher’s story (she wrote the original screenplay) could be called oblique and whimsical, but her movie is rooted in the rude, earthy tradition of Pasolini, the Tavianis and Roberto Rossellini (whose daughter Isabella has an extended cameo here as the mother of Arthur’s beloved, missing Beniamina). That is to say, it’s a vivid and authentic film of the land and the people who live on it, not to mention those who came before and are buried underneath.
La Chimera sneaks up on you. Rohrwacher is a discreet virtuoso with a visual style that is appealing and demonstrably unshowy. She reveals beauty rather than pummels you with it, the way flashier filmmakers do, and lets meaning emerge without trumpet blasts. She invites you to look at the world, to follow the thread, assemble the pieces.
Manohla Dargis, New York Times
Mournful yet exuberant, La Chimera is a towering work of art presented with the unassuming invitation of a warming summer morning.
Carlos Aguilar, LA Times
Given the way O’Connor lends this lost soul such a downbeat charisma and genuine sense of pain, you’re just thankful that we’re getting a performer of such immense talent doing justice to this tomb raider right now.
David Fear, Rolling Stone
Alice Rohrwacher
Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher, Carol Duarte, Vincenzo Nemolato
Italy/France/Switzerland
2023
In Italian and English with English subtitles
Best Screenplay, Grand Prize of the Jury Cannes 2023
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Eli Bush, Jeff Deutchman, Alexandra Henochsberg, Alessio Lazzareschi, Manuela Melissano, Pierre-Francois Piet
Producer
Carlo Cresto-Dina
Screenwriter
Alice Rohrwacher
Cinematography
Hélène Louvart
Editor
Nelly Quettier
Production Design
Emita Frigato
Also Playing
The Fugitive Kind
Sidney Lumet's movie brings together two of the greatest actors of the period, Brando and Anna Magnani, reason enough to check out this underrated poetical drama about a handsome musician who washes up in a small southern town.
Georgia O'Keeffe: the Brightness of Light
Drawing on her copious correspondence and the world's leading scholars, this is a definitive documentary on the life and work of "the mother of American Modernism."
Fairy Creek
Considered the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, the Fairy Creek blockade led to more than 1200 arrests. What Jen Muranetz's film gives us is the story from the front line from the activists' point of view (often, from the treetops).
Super Happy Forever
This beguiling film depicts a man’s return to the Japanese seaside town where he met his now-deceased wife five years earlier. He tries to relive the past, and in the film's final section -- a flashback to 2018 -- the audience is afforded that privilege.