LA CHIMERA Luminaries

English expat archaeologist Arthur (Josh O’Connor) has gone to seed. Having relocated to Tuscany in the early 1980s, he fell in love with Beniamina, the daughter of aging local aristocrat Flora (Isabella Rossellini). But Beniamina has died, leaving Arthur a lost soul, though one with the gift of second sight: he can use a dousing rod to locate lost Etruscan tombs and their treasure hoards with uncanny precision. Along with a motley crew of graverobbers, Arthur takes part in finding and selling antiquities illegally to the mysterious local dealer Spartaco, a money-making adventure for the carefree members of the gang, but just a way to keep booze and cigarettes in supply for the morose Arthur. Then he meets Italia (Carol Duarte), the live-in maid and sometime singing pupil of Flora, who might represent romance in the land of the living instead of Arthur’s doom-laden obsession with the underworld. This funny, folkloric, romantic and thought-provoking film from Alice Rohrwacher (HAPPY AS LAZZARO, AFI FEST 2018; LA PUPILLE, AFI FEST 2022) may be her greatest yet. –Todd Hitchcock