La Chimera - dowsing for treasure

[Grahame]

I don't think I'm likely to go and see this film, but if it happens to appear on telly at some point it might be worth a look:

Cannes 2023 Film Review: La Chimera
Arthur Harrison (Josh O’Connor) has a special gift. With a dowsing rod in hand, he can detect buried treasure. Living in Italy, though it’s never explained why, he and a band of grave-robbers dig up Etruscan artefacts and sell them on the black market to the highest bidder.

Arthur is also a rather sad guy. Pining for a lost love we presume has died at some point in the recent past, he walks around in dirty clothes, unkempt beard and looks almost destitute. Alice Rohrwacher’s latest is a rather mystifying work, with nothing to hold onto, offering up a vague story about a vague man with a vague life and vague friends. Mystery only works if it’s alluring and grips. Here, it does neither.

Nothing sticks, nothing grabs, La Chimera (2023) is dull as a muddy puddle, with uninvolving characters, a boring storyline with a protagonist exclusively moping about for over two hours. At least Rohrwacher hired Hélène Louvart to shoot her new film. La Chimera does at least look great in an understated way.

Read the rest of the review here.

[Grahame]

Well, having seen La Chimera, I have to say I really enjoyed it. That London Economic reviewer must have been having a bad day when he saw it.
Here's a link to The Guardian's 5-star review for contrast.

Despite the world-weariness of Arthur, the main character, the film is joyous, chaotic, dreamlike, and very Italian. It's not afraid to experiment with the medium either - it utilises different screen ratios, flipping the image upside down, undercranking the camera for comic effect in chase scenes. Yet there's always an unspoken sense of magic lurking at the edges; not least in the dowsing scenes where Arthur tracks down buried Etruscan tombs with his forked twig, sometimes being so overcome that he actually faints on the spot.

There are some surreal moments too, particularly those of his lost girlfriend spooling her red thread like Ariadne leading Theseus out of the labyrinth; often we are left to interpret these for ourselves. There's a lot to unpack in there and it will be worth watching again when it hits the small screen.

Here's the trailer where you get a brief glimpse of Arthur dowsing: