Fusing anarchy and melancholy, La Chimera follows a supernaturally gifted, strangely situated Brit as he casts a spell on a group of hard-up Italians in an irresistibly rustic, 1980s setting. Alice Rohrwacher, the director of Happy As Lazzaro, The Wonders, Corpo Celeste and Oscar-nominated short Le Pupille, ups the comedy ante in a deeply affecting, sometimes riotous film featuring shades of Fellini, that also finds room for the iconic Isabella Rossellini.

A chimera is something desperately desired that can never be found, and the film’s heartbroken hero is pining for precisely that: his lost love, Beniamina (played by Yile Vianello in flashbacks). Josh O’Connor (The Crown, Challengers, God’s Own Country) is the protagonist in question, English archaeologist Arthur, a scruffy yet seemingly gentlemanly type, who is released from jail at the outset.

Arthur grumpily makes his way back to the Tuscan town where he’s been living an intriguingly ignominious existence, among unearthed relics in a corrugated iron shack, teetering somewhat romantically on the side of a hill. It transpires that this unassuming man has been illegally plying his trade as the unlikely leader of a ragtag gang of grave-robbers, maintaining his grip on his acolytes due to an uncanny ability to sense the resting spots of the dead. 

On his return, Arthur is warmly embraced by Flora (Rossellini), the elderly, wheelchair-bound mother of his longed-for lover. Flora resides in a crumbling, leaky mansion, cared for by talentless singing student Italia (Carol Duarte), who has secretly moved her two children into the property, away from the old woman’s prying eye and those of Flora’s fussing daughters who drop by to bicker and take stock of their inheritance. As Arthur falls back in with his old crew and gets into the usual grief, Italia takes a shine to this enigmatic figure, whose heart belongs to an unattainable other.

Rohrwacher grew up in Tuscany listening to locals boast about their life-changing discoveries of Villanovan tombs and Etruscan vases. Inspired by such stories and by the deathliness of lockdown, Rohrwacher and her fellow screenwriters, Carmela Covino and Marco Pettenello, give us a layered tale set in an Italy haunted by past glories and which explores complex relationships between the living and the dead.

Despite the potential for doom and gloom, Rohrwacher brings great playfulness to her direction, slowing down and then speeding the action up, throwing in fun montages, and presenting a kaleidoscopic vision of humanity. A pair of celebratory songs hold the gang aloft as folk heroes, warmly revelling in these colourful characters who live off-grid and rub along amiably as they break the rules in order to keep them and their loved ones afloat. 

Although on one hand a work of unabashed eccentricity, La Chimera also retains a realist streak, epitomised by Hélène Louvart’s gloriously grainy and grounding cinematography, captured using a combination of 35mm, Super16mm and 16mm film. The shabby chic aesthetic prevents it looking too meticulously finessed (à la Wes Anderson, whose films in a superficial sense this sometimes recalls) and it cuts deep with its portrait of a rural community falling into total disrepair, as characters dig in the dirt to survive, the deceased evidently better off than the living.

The film pivots around a quietly sensational performance from a perfectly cast O’Connor, who brings that quintessential, almost arrogant Englishness to the role which helped him convince as Prince Charles in The Crown, and yet his multifaceted turn evades easy definition. Arthur morphs from bumbling, sweet and meek, to angry and embittered, to desperately, painfully sad; and he’s always the anomaly, a daydreaming, oddly blessed outsider who exists somewhat apart from those around him. 

Duarte and Rossellini are excellent too, and there’s an enjoyable, late-in-the-day appearance for the director’s sister and regular collaborator Alba, in a role which upends assumptions about what women can be. That Alice Rohrwacher’s most assured film to date should also be her most entertaining is a particular thrill. Assisted immeasurably by O’Connor’s poignant performance, the director delivers slow-burn emotional potency and a profound sense of loss in among the mischief. It’s wonderful when something so bonkers is able to touch your heart.

La Chimera is in cinemas from Friday 10 May.