EXPAT CINEMA: LAZZARO FELICE
We continue with our series of Expat Cinema – where we offer the best foreign movies with English subtitles.
Cannes award-winning director Alice Rohrwacher’s follow-up to The Wonders (Le Meraviglie) is a sun-scorched, time-bending tale of a tobacco magnate and a village of sharecroppers.
The village of Inviolata (Italian for ‘unsullied’) lives up to its name in successful Italian director Alice Rohrwacher’s third film. The small community of tobacco farmers lives as it has for centuries. However, the marquis’ car – who rules the plantation with an iron fist – and her son Tancredi’s mobile phone reveal that we are closer to the present than we might think.
In turn, the exploited villagers abuse the endless patience of young Lazzaro, who is innocence personified. From the moment he and Tancredi become friends, everything goes wrong. Following a dramatic incident, the villagers are dragged into the modern age. Lazzaro felice (a screenplay winner in Cannes) tells a wondrous tale in which fable and social realism unite, as if by magic.
