The Won­ders

Prov­ing once again why she’s cur­rent­ly regard­ed as one of Ital­ian cinema’s most excit­ing prospects, Alice Rohrwach­er fol­lows up her impres­sive 2011 debut, Cor­po Celeste, with this semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tale of a colour­ful family’s strug­gle to keep its head above water against a chang­ing tide.

We’re in mid­dle Italy, more specif­i­cal­ly on a tum­ble­down farm owned and oper­at­ed by gruff patri­arch Wolf­gang (Sam Louwyck) and his four young daugh­ters. Bee­keep­ing is their trade, the fis­cal rewards of which are sweet but offer scant nour­ish­ment. Keep­ing the whole rab­ble in check are moth­er Angel­i­ca (Rohrwacher’s elder sis­ter, Alba, per­haps best known to UK audi­ences for her sup­port­ing turn in Luca Guadagnino’s Milanese melo­dra­ma from 2009, I Am Love) and spiky live-in helper Coco (Sabine Timoteo).

Theirs is a mod­est set up – the equip­ment the use to har­vest the hon­ey is sim­ple and out­dat­ed – but they seem rel­a­tive­ly con­tent in their coun­tri­fied ways. Wolf­gang is strict yet fair, and his strong work eth­ic means there’s always enough bread on the table to go round. But it’s a ques­tion of ​‘for how long?’ when impend­ing reg­u­la­to­ry changes dic­tate that they mod­ernise or risk being shut down.

The fam­i­ly effec­tive­ly rep­re­sents tra­di­tion­al Ital­ian work­ing val­ues, which are being threat­ened by big busi­ness (per­son­i­fied here by inva­sive­ly loud gun­fire from pass­ing hunters, met with fist-shak­ing wrath by Wolf­gang) in the less pro­gres­sive parts of the coun­try. It’s a sym­pa­thet­ic por­trait, but Rohrwach­er nei­ther glo­ri­fies their peas­ant lifestyle nor con­demns the eco­nom­ic cli­mate that is slow­ly squeez­ing them dry. Instead she focus­es large­ly on the rela­tion­ship between Wolfgang(grateful for every­thing he has but qui­et­ly des­per­ate for a son) and eldest daugh­ter Gel­som­i­na (Maria Alexan­dra Lun­gu), ded­i­cat­ing leisured sequences to them tend­ing their hives in a neigh­bour­ing crop farmer’s parched fields.

The sump­tu­ous cin­e­matog­ra­phy and crisp Umbri­an sun lends these scenes an almost dream-like qual­i­ty, which is jux­ta­posed by the pres­sure-cook­er set­ting of the fam­i­ly abode. It’s here that the film real­ly takes shape, as the adults bick­er about how they’re going to afford to replace their old-fash­ioned machin­ery, and the girls pro­vide suc­cour and dis­trac­tion in equal mea­sure as chil­dren do.

The quick­est path to sal­va­tion is revealed in the form of a tele­vi­sion tal­ent con­test where a hand­some cash prize is award­ed to the most view­er-friend­ly agri­cul­tur­al fam­i­ly. Nat­u­ral­ly, the show is humor­ous­ly trashy and host­ed by Mon­i­ca Bel­luc­ci in daz­zling fetish god­dess regalia. But Wolf­gang, out of sheer stub­born­ness, isn’t inter­est­ed, prompt­ing Gel­som­i­na to dis­obey her dear papa in an attempt to drag the fam­i­ly out of their dys­func­tion­al mire single-handedly.

For a coun­try with such a rich cin­e­mat­ic her­itage, Italy’s recent track record as far as cham­pi­oning emerg­ing tal­ent is con­cerned, espe­cial­ly of the female vari­ety, is hard­ly what you might call exem­plary. To that end, the con­tin­ued rise of the Rohrwach­er sis­ters comes as both a wel­come ton­ic and the surest sign yet that the long-term future of Ital­ian cin­e­ma is in good health.