La chimera

After LAZZARO FELICE, LA CHIMERA returns us to the rural heart of Italy with a tale of obsession and lost love. Arthur, our restless hero, is a young Englishman with the gift of rhabdomancy: he can sense the presence of the underground tombs built by the Etruscans. He and his carefree friends earn a living as tombaroli, selling illegal archaeological artifacts on the black market. But Arthur’s own chimera is impossible to tame: possessed by his life’s ghosts, he will push his search for past beauty to the limit. Beside these criminal intrigues, LA CHIMERA is also a tale of history and landscape, a carousel of faces and places that leads us back and forth in time and space. Rohrwacher’s writing is of an astonishing fluidity, capable of mimicking the places it explores: like Arthur, the camerawork unearths buried feelings and connects any number of characters, playing with them in a genuine choral narration. The result is magnificent: a fresco that hints at thousands of years of history and emotions captured in a few, delicate brushstrokes. Free, inspired and ironic in its ever-political gaze, with a strong sense of community and an innate elegance, Rohrwacher’s cinema is the perfect antidote to the often rote rhetoric surrounding Italy. (Rebecca De Pas)