An Ermanno Olmi in colour, but with an aesthetic delight certainly more pronounced than that of the master of “L’albero degli zoccoli” and with a story very often told in a low, whispered voice. } This is how “Vermiglio” is presented, the second work by Maura Delpero, in competition for Italy at the Venice Film Festival, set in the Dolomites, on the border with Austria, where the war is present, but far away, in the valley.
It is a film about “roots”, those of the director of “Maternal”, about things of yesteryear, about the life of a humanity still close to nature and about the time that passes always repeating the same things: births and deaths and, of course, the occasional tragedy.
The story takes place in 1944 in Vermiglio, a high mountain village in the autonomous province of Trento (where the director’s father was born). Here lives maestro Cesare (Tommaso Ragno), torn between teaching a multi-grade class, his passion for classical music and his family, three teenage daughters, Lucia, Ada and Livia, who are so close that they share the same bed.
The arrival of Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico), a refugee soldier (perhaps a deserter), leads to the marriage of the eldest, Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), who becomes pregnant.
Deprived of their sister, Ada (Rachele Potrich) and Livia (Anna Thaler) are separated by their father’s favoritism.
But fate once again strikes Lucia down. At the end of the war, her husband sets off on a journey to his native Sicily, where a single shot leaves two women widowed.
Lucia realises that she has been only Pietro’s “mountain wife”, murdered by his first and legitimate Sicilian wife, whose existence she had not known about. Lucia then undertakes a physical, though perhaps only imagined, journey to Sicily to confront her husband’s past and to accept with more love the daughter, Antonia, that their marriage has produced.
The iconic moment of “Vermiglio” occurs when the “maestro” has his young students listen to Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”, asking them to identify which one they are listening to.
And the passing of the seasons, both natural and human, as well as the rules of life, are perhaps the core of “Vermiglio”, which is reflected in a popular saying full of concreteness.
Upon hearing of Pietro’s death, leaving behind a widow and a daughter, someone comments: “One more mouth to feed and one less man to work with.”
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
