VERMIGLIO, Maura Delpero (2024) / Love's frozen cliffs, blossoming meadows

The lush and breathtaking beauty of the Italian Alps, filmed with painterly grace under natural light from frigid winter to redemptive spring, provides the physical and emotional backdrop for Vermiglio, Maura Delpero’s visionary film. This singular portrait of a sprawling family, set in the small, mountainous village of Vermiglio during the waning days of WWII, follows a series of dramatic, consequential events after the arrival of a taciturn Sicilian soldier (Giuseppe De Domenico), who hides out in town after deserting the army. While there, the soldier develops a romance with the family's eldest daughter, Lucia (Martina Scrinzi). Vermiglio shows the lives of a provincial family in a remote village suspended in time by the customs of a fading era. Conjuring stories from her own family's past, Delpero creates a deeply personal and human tale that recalls the great neorealist movement in Italian cinema, but through Lucia's perspective Vermiglio feels distinct and novel.

Written and directed by Maura Delpero
Produced by Delpero, Francesco Andreoli, Santiago Fondevella, Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli
Cinematography: Mikhail Krichman
Edited by Gian Luca Mattei
Languages: Latin, Italian
Release date: 2 September 2024 (Venice)
Running time: 1h 59m

HOW THIS WORKS
To find out where to rent or stream Vermiglio online, visit JustWatch.com. Watch it on your own during the week and then join us for our Zoom conversation Saturday, May 17. A Zoom link will appear on the right of your screen once you RSVP. (NOTE: If you can’t get that link to work, copy and paste it into the search bar of your browser.) First-timers must sign up no later than Friday 5/16 in order to ensure being admitted.

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Vermiglio describes a world concealed within our own yet shaped completely to its form, a sphere like a snow-globe which, when shaken by events, will give rise to a flurry of emotions and responses only to see them come to rest again without fail. One of auteur Delpero's gifts is to be able to dramatize these slow everyday occurrences in a coherent story. Stretches of frames pass by without much happening, but we never feel our attention lag or become disengaged from her characters: such are her powers of observation and sensitivity to gesture and to touch. The village itself is laid out before us as a living whole; the lives of Pietro and Lucia and their ill-starred romance are enfolded seamlessly in these barns and huts and winding paths.

Not that the framework of Vermiglio encloses nothing momentous. The specter of the German occupation and not-too-distant combat hangs over all, noting the deserter in their midst; ancient tensions between Italy's South and North are unearthed again; patriarchy is the unquestioned, undefined air the people breathe. Delpero uses Lucia and Pietro to immerse our sensibilities in the rhythms of a world deeply foreign to ours in time and distance, but mere steps away in social structures and matters of the heart. In this context, Lucia's first hesitant kiss of Pietro floods the screen with portent, as does her quiet yet firm declaration when their time to marry has arrived.

At such, Vermiglio, alongside its Shakespearean lovers' drama, works as a portrait of a village integrating its children into its life, stumbles and all. Every indiscretion is taken in stride; the village has long since found an unshakeable balance. In many ways, Vermiglio itself is Delpero's protagonist; after all, the film takes its name from the village, not its two tragic inhabitants. As Wikipedia notes, Delpero "decided to make the film after her father's death as a way to help ensure that the traditions in which he had grown up were not lost, including conducting many interviews with local people during pre-production." We follow Lucia closely, not only to find out how she will resolve motherhood for herself, but also how she will re-establish her connections with those who have known her growing up. And Vermiglio becomes all about our connections to these people as well. Whether we survey the villagers' carousing, the solemnity of Don Cesare's classroom and his male entitlements, or the bustling of women making preparations, we always feel part of the scene — that is Delpero's magic.

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TRAILER, RATINGS, EXTRAS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1P1JRSJT6Q

Rotten Tomatoes: 93% of 59 reviews
Metacritic: 85 (universal acclaim) based on 16 reviews, "Must See"

Vermiglio premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. It was selected as Italy's entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.

Watch Maura Delpero's interview at the 2024 London Film Festival [12:31]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDi4dHsXMPY&t=13s

BLURBS & ATTITUDES
It is a richly compassionate, emotional and detailed drama of family secrets in the wartime Italian countryside, in the manner of Ermanno Olmi or the Taviani brothers. It is wonderfully acted with unaffected naturalism by its cast of professionals and newcomers and plays an extravagant, almost shameless pizzicato on the audience’s heartstrings .... Vermiglio inhabits its own universe with ease and calm but also widens it to include the audience who are inducted into its mysteries. A lovely film. ∞ Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Collaborating with cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, Delpero dramatizes her action via one gorgeous composition and tableau after another, from majestic sights of misty mountain peaks hovering above cold, hard edifices, to lone figures silhouetted against radiant sunsets, to interior shots in which shadow and light appear to be sparring for dominion over these unfortunate souls. The film’s images have a natural, intoxicating richness, conveying an entrancing sense of this hard-bitten milieu and its haunted inhabitants. ∞ Nick Schager, Daily Beast

Vermiglio is so devoted to evoking a time and place that much of its subtlety does not become apparent until a second viewing. It is a rich, enveloping film that asks viewers to approach it as if tiptoeing through the snow. ∞ Ben Kenigsberg, New York Times

The editing by Luca Mattei is evocative through economy: simply by cutting from Adele superstitiously wrapping her ailing infant son in cabbage leaves, to a shot of the falling snow, we understand — even before we see Adele, already pregnant again, grieving at a little cross — that in the interim, the child has died. But then, economy is the watchword of this deceptively formalist film: every aspect of the filmmaking, from Krichman’s immaculate compositions, to the worn, neat costuming from Andrea Cavalletto, to the simplicity of Matteo Franceschini’s spartan piano-based score, speaks to the restraint that Delpero exercises in playing on our feelings. Not because she herself does not feel, but because, like her stoic characters, she is holding herself in check with an almost brutal degree of self-discipline. It contributes to a fascinating narrative remove, which is belied by the close-up clarity of the imagery, but then, up here in the clean alpine air, no matter how distant your vantage point, you can see forever. ....
None of us has to go very far back in our family history before stumbling on a gap in the generational, hand-me-down memories that no living relative can fill. The remarkable, raw-boned and ravishing Vermiglio takes place in the past but operates like a future family secret playing out in the present tense, a perspective that is not quite Godlike, but comes from that which we might as well call God — the spirit of the mothers and the sisters and the daughters who came before and after, and who trusted the imperious mountains to keep their secrets. ∞ Jessica Kiang, Variety.