When the critic Charlie Porter examines a catwalk image, he flips the picture upside down, producing a better comprehension of the clothes. For costume designer Loredana Buscemi, a similar exercise was introduced while she was studying. ‘I can’t remember details, but they encouraged us to draw upside down to develop the right lobe of the brain,’ she says, speaking via a translator. In La Chimera, her latest project with Alice Rohrwacher, the singular Italian filmmaker behind 2018’s Happy as Lazzaro, this capsizing of perspective is employed on several occasions, to highlight the protagonist’s affinity with another world somewhere beneath his feet. Moreover, in an illustrated poster for the film, he’s cast as The Hanged Man, inviting not only theories about his character but more plainly a clean visual of his suit.
Set in Riparbella, Tuscany in the 1980s, La Chimera opens with Josh O’Connor’s Arthur dreaming about his lost love, Beniamina. Awoken by a ticket inspector and immediately aggravated by a salesman ridiculing him, it quickly unfolds that Arthur’s been in prison for his part in a grave-robbing gang (the tomborali). Formerly a student of archaeology, he now digs for Etruscan treasures and assumes the role of leader on account of his skill for dowsing. Rohrwacher’s film follows Arthur as he moves between his illegal activities and the crumbling mansion of Beniamina’s mother Flora (Isabella Rossellini), in whose friendship he finds solace on his return from jail (here also, a prospective new romance arrives in the shape of Italia, a student-cum-domestic worker of Flora’s).
