Alice Rohrwacher, The Chimera and Josh O’Connor from The Crown

While Alice Rohrwacher was on the set of The Chimera, someone brought a stack of vintage newspapers into the room. Surprisingly, on the cover of one was Isabella Rossellini, still in swaddling clothes. To understand the caliber of the cast in the new film, in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, this detail is enough. The project, created by Tempesta and Rai Cinema, is produced by Carlo Cresto-Dina (like all the director’s and screenwriter’s previous works).

The intent this time is – to put it in his own words – «a tribute to the fascination that comes from the north towards the Mediterranean. That’s why the main character, Arthur (Josh O’Connor, ed.), is English but without roots and arrives in a place that is overflowing with tradition, like Italy, a Brazilian woman who looks like another runaway from home».

Alice Rohrwacher’s modesty is now known, but in reality the protagonist is Josh O’Connor, one of the most talented British actors of his generationwho played the young Prince Charles in The Crown (on Netflix) giving the only flicker of humanity to a rather dry and dangerous role.

Instead, in the Italian film he plays a young archaeologist from the 1980s and, as happens in fiction, even in real life the actor began to make himself understood by the locals with gestures on the second day of the clapperboard, without knowing a single word of Italian. That’s why the farewell to the set was painful, as he tells a small group of the Italian press: «This was an adventure for me, I felt like I was living in a circus family for six months that remain the most unique of my career. And this experience also had a personal value because my grandmother was a ceramist and during the excavations in the film, splendid finds emerge, recreated by a very valuable craftswoman. In that moment the joy you see on the screen is genuine, it’s mine. Leaving Arthur was like a mourning for me even if usually in my thoughts usually after the last take the roles don’t live forever ».

The archaeologist comes across a group of grave robbers desecrating cemeteries in search of memorabilia to resell, a very strong metaphor on the link between this world and an infinite, other, perhaps supernatural reality.

«In my experience – explains the director – there is a strong link with the invisible and in La chimera I put past, present, here and there. And presenting it in front of such a large audience leads me to moments of healthy panic and terror».

And to think that last year presented The pupilsOscar-nominated short film: «Seeing the other side of a ceremony that I’ve always watched on TV was incredible. Isabella (Rossellini) gave me excellent advice: “Remember that it is a broadcast, in the commercial break everyone changes, they embrace and celebrate”. You were right and I thank you, as well as Alfonso Cuaròn (who produced the short, ed.) who accompanied me in the American world making our bond grow ».

Different narrative levels and tones coexist in this film and, according to the director «the characters are all straight out of a fairy tale. When you read the script it seems very serious, like Wuthering Heights, but above it there is an acceptance of the ridiculous and a lot of tenderness towards the romantic passion of the protagonist, who loved and then lost his partner».

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