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Friday, July 19, 2019, 11:57
A fable of brotherly love
By Elizabeth Kerr
Friday, July 19, 2019, 11:57 By Elizabeth Kerr

Happy as Lazzaro, written and directed by Alice Rohrwacher. Starring Adriano Tardiolo and Alba Rohrwacher. Italy, 128 minutes, IIA. In cinemas now. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

One part ghost story, one part capitalist cautionary tale, one part elegy for our better natures and a better time, Alice Rohrwacher’s third feature, Happy As Lazzaro, is a singular vision from a challenging filmmaker. It’s also a salve for anyone allergic to Disney remakes and men in spandex during the dog days of summer. 

What can only be described as a fable begins with young Lazzaro (newcomer Adriano Tardiolo) helping around his farming village home of Inviolata, where a young couple has become engaged. He’s told to fetch drinks, which are in short supply due to the town’s general poverty, carry a grandmother around and take the late shift watching for wolves. Lazzaro is an inherently helpful, good young man, and many take his naivete for gullibility. The village looks as though it’s from an indeterminate time in Italy’s pre-industrial past, and until cars and cell phones make their appearance any concept of time is unclear.

Time is key to Rohrwacher’s delicate storytelling (her earlier work, Corpo Celeste and The Wonders, had similar tones), and it shows in the narrative, the production design and even the retro, almost quaint, Super16 the film is shot on. As the tale — based on a true story — unfolds, it becomes clear that the peasants of Inviolata (Italian for “safe from violation”) are living in sharecropper or slave conditions under the Marchesa Alfonsina de Luna (Nicoletta Braschi), in violation of a new law that ensures fair wages and living conditions for workers. The Marchesa’s son Tancredi (Luca Chikovani) finds her behavior reprehensible and forms a strangely unshakeable bond with Lazzaro and a scheme to bilk her out of millions of lire, leading to a social tragedy when the police come looking for the “missing” heir. It also sets up the film’s second, ethereal half, when a tumble sends Lazzaro over a cliff and sees him wake up years later, but not a day older. All he knows is that he must find his friend Tancredi while navigating an unfamiliar and hostile world.

Happy as Lazzaro, written and directed by Alice Rohrwacher. Starring Adriano Tardiolo and Alba Rohrwacher. Italy, 128 minutes, IIA. In cinemas now. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Lazzaro is thick with a dreamy, almost fairy-tale poetry whose rhythms suck you into its odd — yet recognizable — world. Is it bleak? Sort of. Is it hopeful? Kind of. Writer-director Rohrwacher’s collapsing Italian state still has beauty in it, it’s just hard to find it unless you believe strongly in its existence. The imagery is heavy in Lazzaro, especially of the wolf, which according to folklore raised Rome’s founding twin brothers and remains a symbol of the modern republic.

Happy as Lazzaro is quite shameless in its commentary on class divisions. Rohrwacher boldly asks whether or not simple decency has value anymore and examines how the best intentions can fail miserably. At the heart of it all is Tardiolo, who manages to keep Lazzaro innocent and almost otherworldly in a nearly wordless performance that could easily tip over into mundanity or foolishness. He’s genuine, and maintains an expression of unaffected trust that is at times heartbreaking, but at other moments triumphant. Lazzaro may not know it, but he’s a better man than the rest of us.


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