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“La Chimera”: Dreamy film with “The Crown” star
Scene from the film “La Chimera” with Josh O’Connor (m). photo
© -/Piffl Media/dpa
“La Chimera” tells of a group of wild grave robbers in Italy in the 80s. For the main actor Josh O’Connor it should be the beginning of a larger film career.
From Prince Charles to grave robber: The rising acting star is in the film “La Chimera”. Seeing Josh O’Connor in a special role. Series fans know the 33-year-old Brit from the royals series “The Crown”, where he played the then heir to the British throne in the third season.
In Alice Rohrwacher’s film he plays a somnambulant young man who leads a group of grave robbers. But he’s not actually looking for grave treasures, but for a woman he lost.
“La Chimera” is a visually impressive, playful and fantastic work. In the tradition of great Italian directors such as Federico Fellini, the Italian Rohrwacher (42) has created a film that mixes social criticism, dreams and opulently staged images.
It’s all about this
The action is set in rural Italy in the 1980s. The enigmatic British dowser Arthur (O’Connor) is the leader of a troupe of Italians who plunder Etruscan tombs and sell the treasures to fences. One night they come across an important Etruscan treasure trove and find themselves in danger.
Arthur always seems off track. He is obsessed with thoughts of a woman he lost named Beniamina. For a long time it is not clear what happened to her. In between, Arthur meets Beniamina’s mother, an old opera singer (Isabella Rossellini). She lives with a student in an abandoned, run-down villa and encourages the young grave robber that his girlfriend will definitely be back soon.
Dream and reality blur in the film, which places more emphasis on atmosphere than plot. The audience sees sun-drenched villages and landscapes of Tuscany, listens to an Italian balladeer or joins the grave robbers in search of archaeological treasures.
Different cameras in use
The film experiments with various analog cameras. “We worked with three formats of analog film,” said Rohrwacher. “35 mm, which is suitable for frescoes, for iconography, for large-format illustrations like in fairy tale books; Super-16 with its incomparable capacity for storytelling and synthesis that magically takes us straight to the heart of the action; and 16 mm, as by Finds captured by a small amateur camera that are reminiscent of marginal notes in a book.” Individual scenes are shown in fast-forward mode, like on old video cassettes.
In terms of motifs, Rohrwacher plays with various myths. Arthur appears either as a revenant of Orpheus, who is looking for Eurydice in the realm of the dead, or as Theseus, who is groping for Ariadne’s thread. “La Chimera” was screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival last year and was praised there for its sophisticated yet playful narrative style.
O’Connor’s introspective, brooding portrayal of a driven man may be familiar to many from “The Crown.” “La Chimera” is likely to be the beginning of a larger film career for him. The Brit will soon be seen in Luca Guadagnino’s new film “Challengers” with Zendaya in another leading role.