Cor­po Celeste

Grow­ing up is hard. This is espe­cial­ly true if you’re new in town, not par­tic­u­lar­ly out­go­ing and your sis­ter is giv­ing you grief about wear­ing her bras – even though you’re arriv­ing at that dif­fi­cult age where you need them. That’s the sit­u­a­tion in which 12-year-old Mar­ta (Yle Vianel­lo) finds her­self in writer/​director Alice Rohrwacher’s aus­pi­cious debut feature.

After mov­ing back to Italy with her moth­er and old­er sis­ter (there’s no men­tion of her father) hav­ing spent the last 10 years liv­ing in Switzer­land, Martha begins attend­ing cat­e­chism class in prepa­ra­tion for her upcom­ing Confirmation.

While the class­es are meant to be a way for Mar­ta to make friends and learn about the con­so­la­tions of Jesus, even the most sin­cere efforts of the teacher (Pasquali­na Scun­cia) to keep lessons excit­ing are met with dis­dain by the unen­gaged flock.

Parish priest Father Mario (Sal­va­tore Can­talupo, deliv­er­ing a pleas­ing­ly unset­tling per­for­mance) appears per­pet­u­al­ly dis­cour­aged and dis­tract­ed. When invit­ed to watch the choir rehearse, he reluc­tant­ly agrees but com­i­cal­ly wan­ders off before they even fin­ish the song.

Aside from car­ry­ing out God’s Work (like col­lect­ing a life-sized fig­u­ra­tive cru­ci­fix from an aban­doned church), he’s also pol­i­tick­ing, try­ing to manoeu­ver a trans­fer for him­self to a larg­er church where he can have more impact and feel more relevant.

Owing cred­it to Rohrwacher’s great eye for detail, the film por­trays Marta’s iso­la­tion with a sub­tle, obser­va­tion­al tone. Its visu­al style and set­ting, both grit­ty and win­try, bring the Dar­d­enne broth­ers to mind. And scenes in which Mar­ta eval­u­ates her trans­form­ing body or expe­ri­ences her first peri­od are han­dled with a much appre­ci­at­ed naturalism.

The film might be termed a com­ing-of-age tale, but it’s also about the eter­nal ques­tion of faith in an increas­ing­ly sec­u­lar world. There’s even a love­ly lit­tle nod to Tarkovsky’s faith-angst mas­ter­work, The Sac­ri­fice, in a shot involv­ing a gale and a heav­i­ly-lit­tered street. The rep­re­sen­ta­tion of water as a sym­bol­ic ele­ment for change – a Tarkovsky sta­ple – also feels par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant here.

The ensem­ble is well round­ed and each char­ac­ter is cap­tured in a fash­ion that makes them feel real­is­tic and humane. But it’s Marta’s rela­tion­ship with her affec­tion­ate but world-weary moth­er (Ani­ta Capri­oli) that is a par­tic­u­lar high­light, espe­cial­ly for it’s mov­ing hon­esty in depict­ing the fragili­ty of an every­day fam­i­ly bond.

The sym­bol­i­cal­ly over­loaded trip to the aban­doned church aside, this promis­ing debut rais­es inter­est­ing ideas for the pious and world­ly alike: what makes a place celes­tial? How does one attain or main­tain faith in a mod­ern world that is mov­ing (seem­ing­ly inex­orably) away from reli­gion? Can heav­en­li­ness, in fact, be found a lit­tle clos­er to home?