Upon his release from prison, a grave robber, Arthur, sleeps on a train heading to a village in Tuscany which is also his old playground. The enthusiasm with which his accomplices welcome him is not reciprocal. Indeed, Arthur is wary of these criminals who let him take all the responsibility for the crime and serve his sentence alone.
However, the young English archaeologist, who only has to occupy himself with his meetings with Flora, a former singer and mother of his deceased lover, quickly falls back into his bad habits. It must be said that Arthur has a supernatural gift for detecting the presence of treasures buried underground, several of which date back to the Etruscan civilization. In return, the looters do him a favor by digging the tunnels leading to the artifacts.
Secretly, Arthur hopes to discover the passage which, according to legend, would connect the world of the dead to that of the living in this region, allowing him to find his beloved deceased.
Haunted by disturbing dreams, enlightened by a discreet young woman who learns singing – and the profession of a maid – from Flora, Arthur will face the morality of his actions and the absence of sacredness which surrounds his complex relationship with death and possession.
After The Wonders (2014) and Felice Lazzaro (2018), Italian director Alice Rohrwacher offers a new lyrical and poetic fable about those left behind. Its unique universe, located on the border between the neorealism of Roberto Rossellini and the magical realism of Fellini, sublimates the raw beauty of rural Italy, which it bathes in a dreamlike and melancholic atmosphere.
We rediscover with delight the sensitivity of the filmmaker and the luminous and benevolent look that she casts on cramped and dirty places, on ruins as well as on people on the margins — the thugs, the thieves, the innocent and the idealists. Its patient staging unfolds around a gallery of characters who are all as extravagant as they are mysterious and invites us to embrace the vagueness, the unknown and the twists and turns of a story with sinuous contours.
Thus, the director often indulges in digression, both narratively and formally. She plays with the senses as well as with perceptions, suddenly changing ratio, borrowing here from the accelerated and comic style of silent cinema, there from the sung commentary of the chorus of Greek tragedy to arouse emotions and astonishment and blur the temporal tracks.
Josh O’Connor, known for his portrayal of Prince Charles in the Netflix series The Crowncomposes a touching Arthur, but monochrome, not always in phase with the numerous changes of tone adopted by the story.
Even if these digressions and plot games lead to some lengths, Alice Rohrwacher leads her story without ever taking her eyes off her objective; all culminating in a predictable finale, but which reminds us of the undeniable importance of following the paths of one’s heart. A film that feels good.