It’s early but I doubt we’ll see a more picaresque 2024 film than La Chimera, a highly original adventure in dissolute Etruscan grave-robbing. Sometime in the 1980s, Arthur (Josh O’Connor) departs the penitentiary for Riparbella, a Tuscan locale more rustic than you see in tourist brochures. On a slow moving train, he dozes in the sunshine and dreams of Beniamina (Yile Vianello), a redheaded lover who has exited the premises. He wakes up sun-stunned and close to his destination, a place he does not wish to return.
After a chilly night in a tin shack, he reconnects with Pirro (Vincenzo Nemolato), the leader of a pack of uncouth (and often unwashed) tomb raiders (a.k.a. tombaroli). The crew does well with digging, scrapping, and creating diversions but Arthur is the one who knows where to find the grave sites with valuable artifacts. A new arrival, Mélodie (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), brightens the crew with her plunging cleavage and amateur photography. After making merry at a wild Epiphany party, they follow Arthur and his dowsing stick in search of more to plunder.
Seeking more comfortable shelter, Arthur washes up at Flora’s (Isabella Rossellini) door as she rusts away in a once-grand, Havishamian palace of decay. In addition to Arther, Flora is descended upon by a passel of ginger children and grandchildren (Arthur’s flame Beniamina is the missing one, and the red thread of her still goes through him). Flora lives with a vocal student/housekeeper/foil in the form of Italia (Carol Duarte), who doesn’t approve of Arthur’s arrival but nevertheless eyes his gangly form. Arthur is a tempestuous companion, who always seems grimy, with the dirt of millennia old graves under his fingernails. For her part, Italia makes an appalling housekeeper, scorching the sheets and serving cold coffee. But she’s doing a decent job, given the fact that she’s hiding her two children in some of Flora’s unoccupied rooms.
Director Alice Rohrwacher presents Italy as a semi-abandoned and musty place, yet still with exciting pastabilities. Our archaeologically inclined heroes swim in the “electrifying waters” outside the enormous power plant built right on top of ancient gravesites. Rochwacher isn’t afraid of the whimsical, even cartoonish touch, as when she speeds up the frame to show the tombaroli fleeing the keystone cops and/or other crooks. “Even pigs wouldn’t spit on you,” a rival grave robber hisses, before the men humorously growl at each other like Fantastic Mr. Foxes. Arthur doesn’t get rich from his efforts, but he does have a folk song written about him!
At the risk of upsetting fans of The Crown, who are indubitably numerous among my subscriber pool, I have not been terribly convinced by Mr. O’Connor in the past. But I found the uncharming Arthur a much more suitable role than Prince Charles. Our hero’s shack is torn down, and the ginger offspring attempt to put Rossellini in an old folks’ home. All leads to a shambling, down-bad O’Connor, bearded and hopeless like Warren Oates in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
Then luck strikes and Arthur makes his greatest find near the beach. Rohrwacher’s view from inside the crypt is fantastic. We see how, in the ruinous moment of discovery, outside air degrades the paint on the walls. A marvelous statue sits undisturbed until Arthur and the others clamber in. Anxious to escape the police, they commit an act of vandalism so shocking I gasped. It’s far more upsetting than any horror jump scare.
The director’s sister, Alba, has appeared in all her films and we miss seeing the other Rohrwacher here…until a fabulous late cameo that changes the tone of the film completely. While I usually love to traffic in spoilers I’ll leave this fabulous moment for you to discover.
Beyond recurring shots of the ephemeral Beniamina, Rochwacher plays with the hallucinatory reality of many characters, especially in dreamlike train scenes, where passengers appear in the back of the frame, stalking Arthur like wraiths. This director establishes a mood distinct from anyone else currently working, and I admire it very much.
4 out of 5 stars
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La Chimera is now in theaters. Not rated. Running time 2:13.
As you might expect from the title, Spermworld slams us into the discomfort zone. A woman seeking pregnancy, and not inclined to go the usual route (artificial insemination via a sperm bank donor), arrives at the scenic Capri Motel in Santa Cruz. Within seconds of her arrival, an excitable, virile gentleman begins to describe everything she should do to ensure optimal conditions for the swimmers. Including a handstand. Despite the “horrendous one-night-stand,” she gets pregnant via “natural insemination,” which is to say: sex.
Happily the first guy we meet doesn’t reappear and we get to know some gentler souls in the wild world of Facebook-sourced sperm donors. There’s Tyree out in Phoenix, a formerly incarcerated mechanic stuck in a sprawling Americana of rodeo bulls, red rocks, and chain restaurants. He gives his sperm freely, usually meeting women with his signature Big Gulp cup in hand. He often parks across the lot from the folks awaiting the donation and does his work in the car. In one instance he passes over a vial with a smooth, “Mission accomplished,” then goes back about his day. His insistence on presenting a fresh sample irks his fiancée, who has to get on Tyree’s calendar as they try to conceive a baby together.
There’s Steve, a 65-year-old retiree, who wants to devote his life to “giving back to people” (with the possible exception of his ex-wife, for whom he reserves a few harsh words). When he connects with Rachel, a young woman with cystic fibrosis trying to conceive in spite of significant obstacles, we wonder if he might have a few less altruistic motivations for donating. Steve asks Rachel to connect outside of their planned artificial insemination meetings. He says, “I just saw David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive…” and invites her over for a rewatch. It’s quite a moment when we see their reactions to Naomi Watts and Laura Harring climb into bed…
As the documentary unfolds, you begin to think these guys might have some strange breeding kinks. And then you meet Ari (a.k.a The Sperminator) and he unequivocally confirms the hypothesis. He starts with this quote: “I’ve got 123 kids,” (a number that rises significantly during the film). Unlike some donors, Ari tries to keep tabs on his progeny and we see him all over the eastern seaboard on awkward visits. He’s got a hell of a lot of birthday messages to compose, and enlists AI to help with some of them. Ari keeps saying he’s going to quit: “I’m too old to be jerking off in public restrooms.” But then he attends another surreal event, like a kids pageant where a tot dressed as a lion cub squeals, “Look, it’s daddy!” Ari eats at buffets as a cost saving and uses procreation-related examples to teach math at a community college. Even at a triumphant birthday party celebrating his dozens of kids still takes two trips to the bathroom to make more deposits for ovulating guests.
Occasionally Ari heads down to Palm Beach to get negged by his disapproving parents. His buddy tries to defend him with, “What about King David? He had lots of kids!” but Ari’s mother, in a fabulous accent, dismisses his goings on as “Not a normal life.”
This film follows Some Kind of Heaven in the filmography of the very talented Lance Oppenheim, a native Fort Lauderdalean. I believe he needs to be held captive in the Sunshine State to create a dozen more documentaries until we finally get to the bottom of the insanity that abounds down in America’s Wang.
Oppenheim’s exceptionally gifted at finding great shots. He often places characters’ eccentricities in the foreground with gliding pelicans and Miami Vice sunsets in the background. About his one-of-a-kind subject, Ari, Oppenheim has said: “There’s this real, tangible comic misery feeling that you’re around when you’re with him. But when you leave and when he’s gone, there’s also this sense that he’ll never probably fully fathom the emotional devastation or confusion that he causes for so many people. And I don’t think he’s conscious of it, really.”
Cinematography by David Bolen and editing by Daniel Garber (both returning collaborators) subdue the garish locations and personalities with a relaxing, almost Vaseline-lubricated approach to Spermworld. I admired the recurring shots of closed bathroom doors, semen-filled syringes, and ladies’ legs propped up the wall after the samples get deposited.
While the focus remains on his three male leads, Oppenheim delicately explores the hopefulness and despair often at the heart of pregnancy stories. He also gets to the sheer oddness of modern American life (where the absurdity increases the deeper you get into Florida).
4 out of 5 stars
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Spermworld is streaming on Hulu. Rated R. Running time 1:23.
NB: If this film piques your interest in sperm-y matters, allow me to refer you to the finest podcast ever produced on the topic of my own discharge.