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At a crucial point, the gentle narrative of Vermiglio takes a stormy, decidedly operatic turn, although it is the Chopin nocturnes heard in Maura Delpero’s film that really define its mood. Set in 1944, this is a female-centred drama in a vein of hard-times ruralism — with tenderness and phenomenal visual beauty offsetting the austerity.
Italy’s Oscars entry for Best International Feature Film, Vermiglio is named after its setting, a village high in the mountains of northern Italy. For much of the film, Vermiglio is snowbound and steeped in deep blue light: it opens with the Graziadei family huddled in their shared beds, waking to face a typically chilly dawn. Cesare (Tommaso Ragno), a severe, quietly withdrawn patriarch, runs the small school where the pupils include his several children of different ages, including oldest daughter Lucia (Martina Scrinzi). With the family ever expanding — mother Adele (Roberta Rovelli) is nursing a new baby — life seems stable, solidly rooted in the turn of the seasons. But things will change: a relative has returned from the war with a comrade, a young Sicilian (Giuseppe De Domenico), whom Lucia can’t help noticing.
In a narrative that develops as gradually as the snow thaws, Delpero builds up the character sketches: the religious anguish of younger sister Ada (Rachele Potrich); the resentment of older son Dino; the outsider status of rebellious neighbour Virginia. Delpero’s dense, meticulous accumulation of intimate detail makes us feel that we’re really inhabiting this small universe, with all its harshness and its comforts, as much at home in it as the family.
Vermiglio brings us ever closer to the family’s drama, even as human events are dwarfed by the scale of the landscape, with cinematographer Mikhail Krichman often framing people against a vast sweep of snowy hillside or, in spring, a green curtain of distant mountains. You won’t regret the visit.
★★★★★
In UK cinemas from January 17
