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.

For me, the most difficult films to write on are the ones that don’t elicit any emotion at all, either positive or negative, and La Chimera qualifies. It’s not by any means a bad or poorly made film – on the contrary, it’s quite beautifully crafted and gorgeous to look at, with its playful camerawork credited to Hélène Louvart. But I found myself lulled into emotionally mute sedation by its relatively meager pleasantness. The dreaminess, a clear evocation of Fellini, feels well-worn and contrived instead of exciting, coasting on aesthetics. There are sequences which toe the line between dreams and reality; characters break the fourth wall at one point; and there is a fuzz around the frame to give the impression of worn, dated materials, in parallel with the film’s content. Yet the simulated roughness of the film’s frame is ironically counterbalanced by just how gentle La Chimera is. All of the extra elements come across like gimmicks.

The film wants to raise the question of who has a right to what the dead carry. Of course, future generations all carry it in one form or another, passing it on like an heirloom or hand-me-down sweater. But when what’s carried is a shared cultural history with no intended forebear, does it automatically become everyone’s, or no one’s? The question is given something of a light, easy answer – fitting for a film that, despite its philosophical ambition, often feels light, easy, and unchallenging. There’s nothing wrong with art that is easy on the eyes and the spirit, but death is something which is neither.

Director: Alice Rohrwacher
Writer: Alice Rorhwatcher, Carmela Covino, Marco Pettenello
Starring: Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Carol Duarte, Vincenzo Nemolato, Alba Rohrwacher
Release Date: October 7, 2023 (New York Film Festival)

Brianna Zigler is an entertainment writer based in middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts. Her work has appeared at Little White Lies, Film School Rejects, Thrillist, Bright Wall/Dark Room and more, and she writes a bi-monthly newsletter called That’s Weird. You can follow her on Twitter, where she likes to engage in stimulating discussions on films like Movie 43, Clifford, and Watchmen.