La chimera is a 2023 Italian film written and directed by Alice Rohrwacher, starring Josh O'Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Carol Duarte, and Alba Rohrwacher, among others. It premiered at the 2023 edition of the Cannes Film Festival, in contention for the Palme d'Or.
The film is set in the 1980s and centers on Arthur (O'Connor), a British archaeologist turned tombarolo, or tomb robber, in the Italian countryside. Having recently been released from prison, he returns to his old crew and sets about digging for more treasure - but he grieves his departed lover, Beniamina, even as a potential relationship with a servant named Italia (Duarte) blossoms.
This film contains the following tropes:
- The '80s: The film is set in this decade, and despite the rustic, timeless Tuscan setting, the modern world gradually encroaches.
- Aside Glance: Melodie does this exactly once in the film, addressing the camera as she asserts that, had Etruscan society lasted, Italian culture wouldn't be so macho.
- Bittersweet Ending: Arthur burns his bridges with both his old crew and Spartaco, and can't bring himself to accept an offer of a happy life with Italia and her family. He ends up dying during a dig when a tunnel collapses on him - but he is finally reunited with his beloved Beniamina.
- Capitalism Is Bad: For all the good times and camaraderie the tombaroli have, the film makes their greedy, unscrupulous nature clear: instead of preserving the sacred Etruscan artefacts they find, they simply pluck them from the ground and sell them to a corrupt fence who falsifies documents to make them appear legal. The film ends up criticizing the money-hungry attitude capitalism encourages at the expense of history.
- Chekhov's Gun: In various flashbacks through Arthur's dreams, we see Beniamina frequently toying with a length of red yarn. At the end of the film, when Arthur is trapped underground, red yarn dangles above him, and pulling on it brings him to the surface (or the afterlife), where he is finally reunited with Beniamina.
- Creator Thumbprint: As one might expect from an Alice Rohrwacher film, La chimera is a magical realist fable set in the Italian countryside, with a reverence for history and tradition as well as disdain for capitalist greed.
- Food Slap: The heavily-in-denial Flora splashes one of her daughters with wine when she makes the mistake of referring to Beniamina in the past tense.
- Heel Realization: Italia's disgust with tombaroli makes Arthur regret the mercenary, money-hungry attitude of he and his fellow tomb robbers. When Pirro and the rest of the crew present the Etruscan statue's head to Spartaco on her yacht and demands money in return, Arthur repeats Italia's belief that the treasure is "not meant for our eyes" and throws the head overboard, much to the horror of Pirro and Spartaco.
- Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Italia, despite her ambition to be a singer, is noticeably (and realistically) tone-deaf. Flora only gives her lessons so that she can have a servant around the house.
- The Lost Lenore: Beniamina is this for Arthur. He spends more or less the entire film haunted by her absence, and can't bring himself to commit to a new relationship because of it.
- Magical Realism: The film is not quite fantasy, but the borders between reality and unreality are quite porous, as is typical for a film by Alice Rohrwacher.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Arthur has a gift for dowsing and treasure hunting that even seasoned tombaroli are awed by, a process that often leaves him physically overcome. Its mechanics are never explained, and it's left ambiguous as to whether his skill is supernatural or now.
- The Pig-Pen: Arthur's white linen suit becomes increasingly grubby and dirty as the film goes on, and comments from the salesman on the train indicate that he hardly smells fresh. Justified: he is a tomb robber who just got out of prison, after all.
- Samus Is a Girl: Spartaco, the wealthy and corrupt fence through which Arthur and his crew do business, turns out to be a rather comely forty-something woman (played by the director's sister, Alba Rohrwacher). Arthur is visibly taken aback when he finds this out.
- Together in Death: At the end of the film, Arthur follows a piece of red yarn after a tomb collapses over him, reuniting him with Beniamina in what is heavily implied to be the afterlife.
