Why we picked it – A longer film that will take a dinner interval. An Italian film. Think of the menu. And a bit of magical realism.
Synopsis – Arthur, a British archaeologist, has been released from prison. He visits his former girlfriend Beniamina’s mother meets her live-in maid, Italia. Beniamina is missing, but her mother is convinced she will return. The next day Arthur meets up with old tomb-robbing gang (tombaroli) who he helped with his powers with a dowsing twig and his visions. They resume their trade. Arthur and Italia grow close, but when she realizes what Arthur and his friends are up to, she leaves him. Inside a new tomb, Arthur and his friends decapitate a statue to get it out. The gang meet up their fence on her boat. She is interested in the head but, in a change of heart, Arthur throws it overboard into the water. Furious the gang ejects Arthur and, homeless and on the streets, he meets Italia’s daughter, who takes him to her mother. The two reconcile, but he leaves the next morning. Arthur joins a different group of tombaroli. After locating a new tomb, he enters but the shaft collapses behind him. He has a final vision in which he reunites with Beniamina.
The film – La Chimera is a bewildering combination of several story types: part comedy crime caper, part love story, part metaphor for modern Italy, part collision of past ad present part surreal exploration of the margins between the living an the dead with typical Alice Rohrwacher characters on the margins of society. Here is Rohrwacher talking about what drives her sense of storytelling.
Director – Alice Rohrwacher Writers – Alice Rohrwacher, Carmela Covino, Marco Pettenello Cinematography – Hélène Louvart