Lazzaro Felice (Happy as Lazzaro)
If as an Italian filmmaker you manage to successfully bring echoes of Fellini, Visconti, De Sica and Passolini, while at the same time creating something that is so rich and authentic that feels like a new breeze of inspiration for contemporary cinema, you've clearly succeeded in your mission as an artist. With Lazzaro Felice, Alice Rohrwacher manages to achieve all that: a film that draws the best assets from Classic Italian Cinema but putting them to the service of a refreshing storytelling that is bold and smart at using innocence and tenderness as her weapons to create a powerful criticism of harsh social realities.
Part a neorrealist social film, part a tale of manners, and part magical realism, Lazzaro Felice dares to juggle with several concepts and styles, but finds a congruent communion among them in order to tell a story about the most innocent young man and his friendship with the son of the owner of the lands that he and his family work, in almost feudal conditions. The agreeable approach is quite surprising, and is a very welcome departure from the bleak and crude visions that most European directors use while dealing with social topics. A rich cinematography embraces the rural environment and supports the joyful and sweet vision of the film, and Rohrwacher know exactly how much time to take in order to enjoy the details and giving space for their characters to expand, while not making the narrative slow and boring.
The director is also very smart in her use of religious symbolism, using Catholic myths as hooks, but never turning it into a religious film, she is elegant and approaches this elements as if they were folk tales rather than sacred hymns, avoiding setting a position towards faith, and only using them to show us the main character as if his innocence would take him closer to a state of sanctity: the supernatural events are miracles that happen not because of the faith but because of the innocence.
If the vision of the author hasn't been as clear as Rohrwacher's, this ship would have sunk in the middle of the film, but she is an artisan that has elaborated a realist world with enough care to make room for the fantastic elements that she drops with subtlety and elegance. The plot twists are equally funny and intriguing, and she manages to create a social critique that never slaps you in the face, that shows in its entirety the wrongs of class differences, but never appealing to the brutal or the sordid, always respecting the humanity of all of her characters.
Alice Rohrwacher makes significant improvements to her style and her skills with every film she releases, and if she keeps this pace, we won't be surprised if soon she is sweeping big awards at the most prestigious Festivals in the world. Her voice is fresh and very needed, a voice that speaks from humanity and compassion, and that is able to express beauty in the simple things while not sacrificing any intellectual value in the process.
