Lazzaro Felice (2018)

Directed by: Alice Rohrwacher | 125 minutes | drama | Actors: Alba Rohrwacher, David Bennent, Sergi López, Nicoletta Braschi, Tommaso Ragno, Adriano Tardiolo, Elisabetta Rocchetti, Alessandro Genovesi, Agnese Graziani, Luca Chikovani, Daria Pascal Attolini, Daria Deflorian, Carlo Massimino, Antonio Salines

The first thing you think is: where on earth have we ended up? At the beginning of ‘Lazarro felice’ we completely lost our way. It is clear that we are in Italy, but which region is this and what time? We see an estate with poor farm workers, we hear stories about a Marchioness, we listen to songs from a distant past. But there is also a mobile phone (with antenna), there are lira, there are old cars.

That sense of alienation lingers for a while and is one of the appealing elements of this Italian drama. The main character is Lazarro, a simple but very good boy who does tiresome chores for the farm workers all day long. These agricultural workers in turn are exploited by the aforementioned Marchioness and her entourage. All the more remarkable is the blossoming friendship between Lazarro and Tancredi, the Marquise’s son.

‘Lazarro felice’ deals with a topic that is more topical than you think at first glance. The history of the farm workers and the Marchioness is reminiscent of recent abuses such as the exploitation of Polish asparagus pickers in Someren in Brabant. The second part of the film, after a remarkable interlude, is set in a city where the former farm workers have still not overcome their poverty.

Although all this sounds like dark realism, ‘Lazarro felice’ offers much more than that. The farming community is close and loving, the plot has many connected motifs and the naming is often ironic (a dog of less than 30 grams called Hercules, a smeared estate called Inviolata). We also witness surrealistic and fairytale scenes.

These non-realistic elements make the film manageable, but at the same time ensure that it sometimes comes across as too sophisticated. Forced opposites (wolves and sheep, masters and servants, saints and sinners, villages and towns), names that are too revealing, and our Lazarro as the chewed-up character of the holy simple soul, somewhat comparable to the idiot from Dostoevsky’s novel of the same name.

This substantive artificiality clashes with the realism of the images. We would rather have been in a surreal universe all this time or in a realistic environment. Now the film swings from fairy tale to reality and back again. That this unbalanced drama by Alice Rohrwacher entertains and intrigues for two hours must be a miracle, Catholic or otherwise.