A Real Find
Alice Rohrwacher isn’t for everyone, but if she is your jam this could be peak performance.
La chimera
Director: Alice Rohrwacher • Writer: Alice Rohrwacher
Starring: Josh O'Connor, Carol Duarte, Isabella Rossellini, Vincenzo Nemolato, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, Alba Rohrwacher
Italy • 2hrs 11mins
Opens Hong Kong July 25 • IIA
Grade: B+
A chimera is a mythological Greek beast, a fire-breathing hybrid of many, many animals whose name now also refers to anything made up of conflicting, random parts. Or anything that could be considered wildly implausible. Example: A second Trump administration will be a great thing for everyone, everywhere. In Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s (Happy as Lazzaro) aggressively unconventional hands it’s the entirety of the film itself: a hybrid of implausible, but not unengaging, events and circumstances that defiantly add up to a coherent if abstracted whole. La chimera is a fantastical contemporary folk tale that contemplates the weight of the ghosts of the past as they bear down on the present, one that places a much, much higher value on dreamy, fairytale images rather than narrative logic. Shot in warm, rustic 35mm by Lazzaro shooter Hélène Louvart – a step up from that film’s Super-16, but with a similarly confounding central character – La chimera has all the languid, seemingly haphazard hallmarks of Rohrwacher’s singular voice. To say it isn’t for everyone is a massive understatement, but anyone thirsty for a challenging watch that leaves you scratching your head in the best ways should buckle up. This is not Deadpool.
Raiders of the lost arks
La chimera unfolds in the rolling hills or Riparbella, in Tuscany, and follows the misadventures of Arthur (Josh O'Connor, Challengers, showing off how incredibly versatile he is), a British archaeologist returning to Italy after getting sprung from jail. Like many British archaeologists of days past, Arthur is a tomb raider – which is what sent him to the clink – except he has a supernatural skill (and a dowsing stick) that allows him to locate artefacts almost magically. Decked out in the filthiest suit ever put to screen, he reconnects with his thieving tombaroli gang for a few raids and Etruscan discoveries when he’s not holed up in a shantytown of one in the hills. But Arthur can’t help himself and drops in on Flora (Isabella Rossellini), the Miss Havisham-ish mother of his ex-girlfriend Beniamina (Yile Vianello), who’s missing and presumed dead. Living in Flora’s decaying palazzo is her maid, Italia (Carol Duarte), an opera student who finds tomb robbing offensive but with who might – might – be able to rekindle Arthur’s interest in romance. The, ahem, action ends at a secret auction on a yacht, run by shady art dealer Spartaco (Alba Rohrwacher), which might also accidentally send Arthur back to his beloved Beniamina. Or not.
La chimera is carried along by its own internal sense of time and space, and moves at a deliberate pace that Rohrwacher has a firm handle on. The threads of the story start all over the place: We meet Arthur on a train coming from where he was incarcerated, a ride that seems out of another century. Flora’s crumbling mansion is also home to a budding feminist commune, either because of her brood of suspicious daughters who trust neither Arthur nor Italia’s motives, or in spite of them. They’re right, because Italia is hiding her two children in the house. There’s Arthur’s squad and a rival gang that play a crucial role in his fate. Eventually all these threads get tied together, but it takes a dedicated effort to get there. On the surface you can say La chimera is a screed about the inherently corrupt nature of the antiquities business: there’s no such thing as one that isn’t stolen, and there’s a great deal of truth to that. Rohrwacher’s Italy is one of spectres of history that haunt the land, but also give it its endless depth – and allow for unchecked rot. Beneath that surface it’s a story about emotional spectres; about grief and lost romance, one that may be reclaimed if you follow the right path, or the right scarlet thread. All of it is carried along by O’Connor’s simultaneously charming, thuggish, naïve and cagey Arthur who muddles his way almost silently through the world, just letting it exert its influence on him. The best way to describe La chimera is to say it’s enigmatic yet tactile, and works best as something to just live in and vibe with rather than understand. That will come eventually. — DEK