La Chimera Is a Sweet But Overly Fanciful Tale of Life, Love, and Death
Set against the ancient stone structures of Tuscany and the dead buried underneath it, Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera settles itself in an area of Italy that feels vastly out of time; thematically, temporally, and geographically linked to her past two features Happy as Lazzaro and The Wonders. Venturing outward from the bucolic village where Arthur (Josh O’Connor) and his jovial gang of grave-robbers reside – their modern clothes offset by the outwardly old-world elders and architecture they’re surrounded by – to an outdoor bar for drinking and dancing, it’s suddenly difficult to parse exactly in what decade the film takes place. It’s strange to be reminded every now and then that there are parts of the world which remain frozen in time, balancing modern advancements with the customs and lifestyles that have, seemingly, remained largely unchanged. But the grave-robbers of the film (the “tombaroli,” as they’re referred to by winking locals) see the past as not something to be left alone, but to take advantage of. The customs that their ancestors buried underground are not sacred, but merely mistakes now readily available from which to profit.
Emerging from an undisclosed stint in jail, Englishman Arthur reluctantly rejoins with the Italian tombaroli who inadvertently put him there: a ragtag gaggle of misfits and scoundrels who illegally dig up the Etruscan treasures buried with their dead to be sold through fences to third-party collectors and museums. The young man has a clairvoyant gift for scouting where artifacts lie hidden under the earth, using a twig as a divining rod to guide his instincts. In addition to his superpowered advantage that makes him a strong grave-robber, Arthur has a genuine passion for archaeology (I suppose college and a real job in the archaeological field are tenuous at best). He supposedly did not join the tombaroli for the money, rather for a “passage to the afterlife.” It becomes clearer that this comes from his desire to stay linked to his deceased girlfriend, Beniamina – referred to through much of the film as if she has simply been away on holiday. This macabre, yet knowing delusion is shared by Beniamina’s physically enfeebled mother Flora, a clever woman played by an unsurprisingly spritely Isabella Rossellini. Flora lives alone in her vast, ancient villa when she’s not being pestered by her throng of predatory remaining daughters, or giving vocal lessons to her unpaid housekeeper, Italia (Carol Duarte).
Arthur is a stoic, brooding man who flies into brief fits of volatility, though it’s a somewhat flat and sedate performance for the usually more exciting Josh O’Connor. But Arthur’s shared grief for Beniamina knits his heart closely to Flora’s, the only character of the film who seems to receive Arthur’s pure, untainted affection, aside from the slightly less unblemished interests in Italia. Arthur seems like he might genuinely have an attraction to the awkward and prudish, though certainly self-aware Italia, but it could be motivated by boredom or melancholy or echoes of his lost love.