La Chimera review: Grave-robbing tale is a witty, poetic and magical masterpiece

Selected cinemas; Cert 12A

Carol Duarte and Josh O'Connor in 'La Chimera'

Chris Wasser

Poor Arthur (Josh O’Connor) has had better weeks. Details are sketchy, but the dishevelled Englishman – a trained archaeologist with a good soul and a decent brain – has just been released from prison.

It’s the 1980s in Riparbella, ­Tuscany, and Arthur is also nursing a broken heart. There is more: his friends are grave robbers. Etruscan burial sites are their speciality and Arthur and his sneaky cohort sell whatever goods they find to a shadowy gangster named Spartaco.

Most of the lads are crooks and chancers, but Arthur, who uses a dowsing rod to help locate valuable antiquities, looks as if he knows what he’s doing. Elsewhere, our scruffy protagonist develops a friendship with his late girlfriend’s mother ­(Isabella Rossellini) and a blossoming romance with her enigmatic housekeeper (Carol Duarte).

Witty, poetic and occasionally eccentric, Alice Rohrwacher’s latest is a masterpiece; an awesome, magical tale that constantly surprises and never disappoints. It’s a fabulous looking film, too, and O’Connor is wonderful as a depressed treasure hunter digging for answers in all the wrong places. In a word? Intoxicating.

Five stars