In La Chimera, the latest movie from film festival favorite Alice Rohrwacher, Josh O'Connor's Arthur is hanging by a thread. Fresh out of jail in a crumpled, stained, white linen suit and mourning the loss of his love, Beniamina, he returns to the Italian village he calls home and his community of fellow grave robbers. Arthur and the "tombaroli" make their living by stealing grave goods from ancient Etruscan tombs, objects that legally belong to the state and spiritually belong to those long dead, selling them on the black market via a mysterious figure known only as Spartaco.
Despite the role he plays in this community, Arthur is an outsider. Although he speaks Italian with near fluency, he's still ostensibly English. He returns from his stint in prison alone: he's the only one of the tombaroli who was arrested. He's the only one of the group gripped by what seems to be a supernatural connection to the artifacts buried in the ground and, although he's welcomed – and even beloved, despite his brooding nature, a world away from O'Connor's recent ostentatious turn in Challengers – by the locals, we get the sense that he's not meant to be there.
