La Chimera (2023)
Written and directd by Alice Rohrwacher
Co-written by Carmela Covino
A couple of decades ago I wrote a failed novel that had, as one of its too-many elements, a character who stole Native American artifacts such as woven baskets from pre-colonization burial sites in the Mojave Desert. The research I did for that part of the book came in handy when I watched “La Chimera,” a comedy-drama from Italy directed by Alice Rohrwacher. In this film, Arthur, a British man with some background in archeology — whether he’s a disgraced doctoral student, or just someone who like digging things up, is never revealed — attaches himself to a shabby crew of Italian grave robbers. They specialize in uncovering Etruscan tombs (that’s a link to the Wikipedia page if you, like me, need help remembering when and where that civilization thrived), and extracting and selling on the black market the artifacts they uncover. Their discovery of a particularly rich trove, and what happens after that, form the basis for the story.
At the beginning of the film, they’re waiting for Arthur (Josh O'Connor, who played Prince Charles on “The Crown”) to come back to their shabby little town after serving time in prison. That he seems to have taken the fall for the rest of them after some previous caper is not the only reason they receive him with honor. They need him in order to properly do their criminal work. Arthur has a knack for locating fruitful grave sites, sometimes using a divining rod, once simply fainting right over a particularly rich find.
What keeps the film from being a comedy is that Arthur is under a constant cloud, only rarely smiling or reacting with enthusiasm to even a profitable discovery. Perhaps he’s haunted by the souls of those whose tombs he leads his friends to, but primarily he yearns for Beniamina (Yile Yara Vianello), the dead daughter of a local voice teacher who has fallen on hard times. We learn nothing about the character of his relationship with Beniamina or how she died, but she’s a constant presence in his dreams, which seem barely separated from his waking reality, drenched as it is with his constant, intuitive awareness that the dead are all around.
Isabella Rossellini plays Flora, the vocal teacher, another of the many prominent supporting roles she contributes to independent cinema these days. (In just the last three months, without trying, I’ve seen her in “Spaceman” (2024) and “Cat Person” (2023) and as the narrator in “Problemista”(2023).) She lends gravitas and a connection to greatness in each film she contributes to, and I am grateful for her presence here as the aging singer whose house is deteriorating around her and who doesn’t remember that her daughter Beniamina is dead. No doubt this is why Arthur feels so comfortable in her house: he can live among his memories of Beniamina with someone to whom her daughter is still alive.
This should give you an idea of the heaviness that prevents this from being the madcap comedy that another filmmaker would have made. The crew of grave robbers are a weaselly, worthless bunch, seemingly without enough education to have developed distinct personalities. Italia (Carol Duarte), the tone-deaf maidservant who thinks she is in Flora’s home to take voice lessons, exhibits a similar dimwitted quality.
Only in one episode does the sun come out. Having left Flora’s home, Italia and the girlfriends of the gang take up residence in the town’s abandoned train station and begin transforming it into a residence for single mothers — that is, themselves. Having broken with the robbers, Arthur comes one afternoon and stays. The women propose that he remain as the resident fixit man and daycare provider. He spends the night with Italia, and the viewer briefly hopes that the two have found a path away from the shabby lives they’ve been living. But the call of the dead is too much for Arthur to ignore, and when he slips away in the dawn to rejoin the gang, you know it’s for the last time.