Alice Rohrwacher lights up the darkness

The week’s cinema releases with Thierry Fiorile and Matteu Maestracci: “La Chimère” by Alice Rohrwacher and “Levante” by Lillah Halla.

The Chimera by Alice Rohrwacher is the fourth feature film by the Italian filmmaker who has made a habit of taking us on a journey through very beautiful landscapes and atmospheres, and therefore shrouded in poetry, with her films Heavenly Body, Wonders And Happy like Lazzaro in chronological order.

This time, we follow Arthur, a young bereaved British archaeologist, who returns to a small town on the banks of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and finds a gang of tomboli, Etruscan tomb robbers, and other archaeological wonders. He will also meet, during this wandering, a former opera singer and an international art dealer, while remaining obsessed by the memory of Beniamina, his missing love. Disappeared like this Etruscan world, which he will have to pillage with his band of celestial tramps, quite a symbol for Alice Rohrwacher.

Levante by Lillah Halla

In an inclusive women’s volleyball team, open to LGBT+ people, Sofia, 17, has a bright sporting future ahead of her, but when she becomes pregnant, the whole group is affected.

In this wonderful elective family, where some are non-professional actresses, the decision is made to help Sofia have an abortion in a country, Brazil, where it is still prohibited. An obstacle course begins, the weight of the evangelical, ultra-reactionary churches will greatly complicate this epic.

Lillah Halla films this threat very well, in working-class neighborhoods, the denunciation of these sects is terrifying, but faced with this desire to control women’s bodies, resistance is on the rise.