Odd ‘Le Quattro Volte’ a nice slice of rural life in Italy

Published 12:01 am Friday, May 13, 2011

Alfred Hitchcock used to speak disdainfully of films that offered a “slice of life.” His movies, Hitchcock said, gave audiences “slices of cake.”

Those yummy confections still stand the test of time. On the other hand, Hitch may have underestimated the appeal of a slice of life, especially the one glimpsed in “Le Quattro Volte.”

There’s no story and no professional acting in this film, but it is not a documentary. At least I don’t think so. There are moments when you’ll be convinced that goats (and one very determined dog) have been directed to deliver inspired performances.

The village is in Calabria, a rural area in Italy. Filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino sets up his camera to observe the comings and goings of this place and its inhabitants, who look as though they’ve been doing the same things for hundreds of years.

The film has an overall shape, although this didn’t really become clear to me until after it was over. We move from observing an elderly man, to the tending of goats, and finally to the complicated process of cutting down a tree and its aftermath.

A particular town square holds focus during a number of scenes, including one astonishing sequence during a Passion Play parade. We watch from a perch far above the street as the dog gets loose, a parked truck gets loose, and — in a kooky series of shots that suggests that animals have taken over the town — the goats get loose.

That single 10-minute sequence qualifies as a classic, and it’s one of those unexpected gems that come along and surprise you while you’re watching an apparently unassuming movie like this.

The film ends with a depiction of a process: the cutting of that tree, its use in an obscure village ceremony, and then the building of a complicated, teepee-shaped kiln, in which embers are dropped and the wood within becomes smoking, blackened charcoal.

That ritual is straight out of old traditions, but any contemporary artist would kill to create an installation with as much beauty and mystery.

This is not explained during the movie (there’s almost no dialogue); we’re just immersed in the process. With this kind of “immersive” non-narrative film, there has to be something going on to justify the attention we are asked to give: a way of looking at life, a viewpoint on the world we didn’t know existed.

“Le Quattro Volte” (the title means something like “four times”) is supposedly about the migration of souls from one form to another, human, animal, mineral. It might be a little too neat for its own good on that score, but it sure succeeds at showing us a new viewpoint.

When the camera playfully travels along a rural road in the midst of a herd of bleating, rowdy goats, you may be fascinated or you may be indifferent, but I’ll bet you haven’t seen that sight in a movie before.

“Le Quattro Volte”: three stars

A non-narrative study of a rural area in Italy, which observes an old man, a herd of goats and the cutting and toasting of wood–subjects that are much more fascinating than they might sound, thanks to director Michelangelo Frammartino’s immersive approach to this material. In Italian.

Rated: Not rated, probably PG for subject matter

Showing: Varsity