While Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny perhaps garnered more press out of Cannes Film Festival last year, it was another selection involving archaeologists and tomb raiders that will have a longer shelf life. Alice Rohrwacher’s latest feature La Chimera, starring Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher, Carol Duarte, and Vincenzo Nemolato, has now finally been set for a March 29, 2024 release from NEON following a 2023 awards-qualifying run and now the new trailer and poster have arrived.
Here’s the synopsis: “Everyone has their own Chimera, something they try to achieve but never manage to find. For the band of tombaroli, thieves of ancient grave goods and archaeological wonders, the Chimera means redemption from work and the dream of easy wealth. For Arthur, the Chimera looks like the woman he lost, Beniamina. To find her, Arthur challenges the invisible, searches everywhere, goes inside the earth – in search of the door to the afterlife of which myths speak. In an adventurous journey between the living and the dead, between forests and cities, between celebrations and solitudes, the intertwined destinies of these characters unfold, all in search of the Chimera.”
While the film ranked quite highly on our top 50 films of 2023 list, Rory O’Connor was a bit more mixed in his Cannes review, saying, “Opening to plenty acclaim in Cannes and leaving empty-handed, this is the first of Rohrwacher’s films that rings contrived. Repeating some of the aesthetic choices first seen in her Oscar-nominated mid-length gem Le Pupille––janky fast-forwards and folksy, exposition-heavy songs performed into camera, or: the creeping sense of something asking to be memed––Chimera comes off more quirky than charming. This is a fine line, and a consequential one. At other times it’s practically cloying: just when one thinks they’ve shirked the film’s glossary of Italian hand gestures from their mind, you’re asked to endure a full conversation. With its cast of adorable kids, Pupille was no less cutesy, but that film held the dual free-passes of taking place at Christmas and lasting just 40 minutes. As Chimera reaches the halfway point of its 133, such whimsy has already begun to gnaw.”
See the trailer and poster below.
La Chimera opens on March 29.