When he abandons himself to his senses—the channel that connects him to the woman he once loved and lost—Arthur (Josh O’Connor), the wayfarer at the centre of Alice Rohrwacher’s astonishing fourth feature, is said to become “lost in his chimeras.” With the help of a dowsing rod, Arthur locates ancient Etruscan tombs for excavation. As he reaches these thresholds to the spirit world, the image on-screen is flipped upside-down, so he appears to have passed through to some parallel world.

La Chimera begins in a dream—one of several in which Arthur sees the face of his absent lover, the Eurydice-like Beniamina (Yile Yara Vianello). In later visions, he watches as she pulls at the loose red thread which keeps her moored to the ground. I was startled to eventually recognise Vianello as the young lead of Rohrwacher’s debut, Corpo Celeste (Heavenly Body, 2011). With something of Lucrecia Martel’s caustic sensibility, that film presents adolescence as a series of scarring rituals. Vianello’s Marta bears witness to the apathy and self-absorption that surrounds her, and yet is expected to declare, without hesitation, her unwavering faith in God, the maker “of all things visible and invisible.” Retaining a roving ambivalence when it comes to religion, Rohrwacher’s cinema draws from mythology and folk tradition, repeatedly evoking unseen and sacred worlds. In her films, however, revelations originate from ordinary people, animals, and objects—a farmhand, bees, wolves, a hair clip, a thread—as opposed to a creator.

With each of her three features since Corpo Celeste, including La Chimera, Rohrwacher has examined Italian identity through characters that occupy the spaces between disparate planes—the past and the present, the corporeal and the spiritual. Notably, all of these films also feature a supporting turn from the director’s sister, Alba Rohrwacher, and have been shot by the brilliant French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, who first collaborated with Rohrwacher on her debut. The first part of this miraculous triptych is also its most understated. The Wonders (Le Meraviglie, 2014) follows a domineering patriarch with four daughters and no sons. The family practise traditional beekeeping, albeit too poorly to keep up with the demands of modern industry. A reality television crew arrives to capture an idealised view of the locals of their region, once called Etruria, where people are supposed to “live like they did” in ancient times. This disturbance brings with it the elusive prospect of a better life, tempting the family’s overburdened eldest child, Gelsomina (Maria Alexandra Lungu).

In 2018’s Happy as Lazzaro (Lazzaro Felice), an extended family toils as sharecroppers, unaware that such arrangements have been outlawed for years. The eponymous character is the lowest rung in this chain of exploitation—and is a figure so saintly he is incapable of comprehending cruelty in others. With Rohrwacher’s stunning sleight of hand, the passage of time bypasses the pitiable Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo), but he remains unable to see that his earnest hopes are founded on his own gross mistreatment.

To desire that which is unreachable is a kind of haunting. La Chimera, like its two predecessors, eulogises those fated to chase after ghosts. The leader of a band of tombaroli (grave robbers), Arthur is both heartbreakingly sensitive; attuned to the spirit world in which he partly lives, and oafish; prone to volatile bouts. His liminal status also pertains to his cultural and linguistic identity—even without having heard his imperfect Italian, strangers easily identify him as “the Englishman.” For a director who famously works with local, non-professional actors, the casting of O’Connor could feel out of place, but he is so endearing and natural in this role that it’s hard not to be won over. O’Connor’s own designation as an outsider only increases the deep melancholy which, in spite of its many moments of levity, is the film’s throughline. Returning from a stint in prison, dirty and dishevelled in his cream-coloured suit, Arthur visits the decrepit home of Beniamina’s mother Flora (Isabella Rossellini, a very welcome presence). Dismissive of her chorus of fretful daughters, and especially cold towards her live-in music student Italia (the luminous Carol Duarte), Flora embraces Arthur as her “dear… [and] only friend,” for he alone shares her complete denial of Beniamina’s passing.

Unbeknownst to the older woman, however, Italia is hiding life—in the form of her two young children—within Flora’s monument to death. In a film that could hardly look lovelier—with its lush, earthy tones and interweaving of footage shot on different stocks—Italia is humour, warmth, and colour itself. In each of my viewings, I was struck by the beauty of the moment in which she dances on a crowded floor, dressed in lustrous rainbow. As Arthur watches her, his longing is palpable; it feels as if, in this very instant, we are witnessing his petrified heart being stirred back to life. It is also through Italia that Rohrwacher lays bare her deeply held convictions. Between the Etruscans, who had such faith in what they could not see that they willingly sacrificed their greatest works of art, and the tombaroli, who scorn tradition for the sake of a quick buck, there is a chasm. Italia, who is affronted by the plundering of ancient relics, and has a reverence for the dead which is indistinguishable from fear, bridges this gap.

Perhaps even more deftly than Happy as Lazzaro, La Chimera collapses time to create a teeming present. In the film’s extraordinary final 30 minutes, Arthur is confronted, fleetingly, by the true victims of his exploits. They are men and women who are not at all different from the living. They linger on, not with malice, but with their own earnest desires. I find it comforting to imagine there could be so little that separates life and death. It’s a feeling like waking in the night and sensing, if only for a moment, the presence of a lost loved one at your bedside. In the morning you will rationalise that you had merely dreamed it, but a part of you will forever hold to the truth of the encounter. It is this truth that is divulged, with lyrical certainty, in La Chimera’s breathtaking conclusion: the wholehearted fulfilment of a dream.

La Chimera releases in Australian cinemas on April 11.

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Grace Boschetti is a Melbourne-based freelance film critic. She has written for Metro, Senses of Cinema, and ScreenHub, among other publications.