Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico) a Sicilian deserter from the Italian Army assists a local fellow deserter, Attillo, to return to the latter’s mountainous home village Vermiglio.
It is 1944 and the Second World War is drawing to a close. Vermiglio appears untouched by the war with an occasional plane flying overhead being the only tangible evidence of a war. Initially there is a veneer of the simple and austere set to the beautiful topography.
Being a southern Italian, the alpine villagers nonetheless accept him due to his “rescue” of Attilo a fellow soldier and villager. Many of the villagers had family fighting in the war and most quickly understand the debilitating effect war can have on soldiers which we today call post traumatic stress disorder. The village children note how war has affected Attillo.
Cinematography beautifully captures the four seasons a viewer experiences with the film. Even though the movie starts with winter there is immediate warmth on the screen almost portrayed as a paradise.
Cesare (Tomasso Ragno) the village schoolteacher is a brusque character with a large family including a deeply religious daughter Ada (Rachele Potrich), a somewhat romantic Lucia (Martina Scrinzi) and the academic achiever Flavia (Anna Thaler).
A romance blossoms between Lucia and Pietro and a joyous springtime wedding is beautifully captured on screen with majestic mountains serving as a scenic backdrop for the wedding celebrations.
The war ends and Pietro leaves behind pregnant Lucia to return to Sicily “to let his mother know he is still alive”. Pietro had promised to write Lucia but no letters come. Pietro, gentle and kind you think and you may be correct. But as a cad times two he will never return to Vermiglio causing a bad psychological slide to a mental collapse by Lucia.
Paradise and the traditional way of life in village are altered by the development of a new postwar Italy. Cesare’s son Dino (Patrick Gardner) becomes surly and defiant with Cesare. His wife criticizes him about this coldness and record buying passion which Cesare considers as food for “his soul” but to his wife it deprives the family of food on the table. Ada is dashed with no educational advancement possible because of the family’s limited financial resources. Lucia is heartbroken and mentally crushed to the extent she sleeps with the cows in the barn and begins to stink like them. Family life has hit the skids. Paradise, as flimsy as it might have been has been destroyed. A family in decline symbolic of a nation in transition?
Throughout good and bad times there is a deep on-screen sense of naturalism and honesty. Of note are the conversations amongst the children usually when they are in their shared beds. A child’s view of circumstances subsisting with an adult view of those same circumstances adds different perspectives to “reality”.
Can we sum up and say the film is the compelling story of a family in an Italian mountain village initially cocooned in a web of dignity, pride but not without its small-town gossip, paternalism, scandal, infant mortality, poverty and sexism. Circumstances rip this façade to shreds and the veneer of the idyllic rapidly fades.
Watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=701RfY55ppQ
Directed and written by Maura Delpero.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Opens 3January2025 in Canadian theatres.
RKS 2025 Film Rating 93/100.
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