La Chimera (Movie)

In her latest dreamy movie, the Italian director Alice Rohrwacher follows a tomb raider, played by Josh O’Connor, who’s pining for a lost love.Like the yellow brick road, the bright red thread in “La Chimera” winds through a world that is both dreamy and touched by magic. The thread has begun unraveling from a long knit dress worn by a woman beloved by the movie’s hero. It trails across the ground, flutters in the air and beguiles you, just like this film. And, like all loose threads — in fraying fabric and in certain stories — this slender cord tempts you to pull it, urging you to see what happens next.“La Chimera” is the latest from Alice Rohrwacher, a delightfully singular Italian writer-director who, with just a handful of feature-length movies — the charming, low-key heartbreaker “Happy as Lazzaro” among them — has become one of the must-see filmmakers on the international circuit. Rohrwacher, who grew up in central Italy, makes movies that resist facile categorization and concise synopsis. They’re approachable and engaging, and while she’s working within the recognizable parameters of the classic art film — her stories are elliptical, her authorship unambiguous — there’s nothing programmatic about her work. More