LA CHIMERA (Melbourne IFF 2023) – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Alice Rohrwacher is back, and the filmmaker who brought us The Wonders (2014) and Happy as Lazzaro (2018) returns with the highly anticipated Palme d’Or nominated (and Palme Dog winning) La Chimera. A generic melange of sped-up slapstick, heist film and romantic fantasy, the film stars Josh O’Connor as Arthur, an archaeologist turned graverobber who returns to the rural Italian home of his lost love Beniamina (Yile Tara Vianello) where he reconnects with her eccentric mother Flora (Isabella Rossellini) and his old tombaroli crew who entice him back into the business of raiding tombs to pilfer Etruscan antiquities. Through Flora he meets the quirky Italia (Carol Duarte), with whom he develops an unexpected connection.

There’s a dizzying generic blend here that perhaps uncoincidentally finds its perfect mythological parallel in the figure of the chimera herself, a creature made up of the body parts of varying different animals. Rohrwacher clearly delights in weaving these disparate threads together, breathing life into her cast of oddballs and misfits as their lives chaotically intersect.

The joy here is pure and undisguised, and while at times the film perhaps lacks a unifying sense of cohesion, as it rambles forward haphazardly towards its entirely predictable but nevertheless charming final moments there is no doubt that the energy driving this vision is authentic. For that alone, it’s hard to fault La Chimera, a film made with such dedication to its own bit that even if we aren’t entirely on board with it, it’s hard not to be swept away.

NOTE: Without actors and writers, we wouldn’t have movies. This review was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in the United States, and the author of this review supports them unequivocally.