Here’s Tuscany, but without the romance.
The cinematography is fuzzy, the people are grubby, and the work — beekeeping — is demanding. No travelogue under the Tuscan sun in “The Wonders,” just an oddball coming-of-age tale that creates loopy magic by the end.
The growing-up is owned by Gelsomina (Maria Alexandra Lugu), the oldest daughter in a honey-making family. As the best worker on the farm, she has a special closeness to bossy German-born patriarch Wolfgang (Sam Louwyck), whose insistence on old-fashioned methods is testing the patience of his exasperated French wife Angelica (Alba Rohrwacher, from “I Am Love”).
Gelsomina’s three younger sisters muck about the ramshackle place, in various states of wildness. (The dialogue is in Italian, but the characters have mixed Euro-origins.)
This vaguely clinging-to-Woodstock existence is altered by two ripples: The family takes in a nearly-mute German boy in need of straightening out, and Gelsomina connives to enter them all in a reality-TV contest — something she already knows her father will hate.
The show purports to elect the “most traditional” Italian family, so we suspect our heroes will have little chance of winning. But writer-director Alice Rohrwacher has other fish to fry.
Along with the grungily realistic view of rural life, she’s busy creating surreal non sequiturs, like the camel that arrives as a family pet, or the first appearance of the TV people — a glamorous crew plopped down like a gaudy circus from a Fellini movie.
I’m not sure all of this blends smoothly, but “The Wonders” does create the believable perspective of a restless adolescent. We’re never far from Gelsomina’s point of view, and the tug between wanting her father’s closeness and needing to explore her own imagination is richly imagined.
When she develops a parlor trick of having a live bee crawl out of her mouth, it’s as though she’s concocted her autobiographical metaphor out of what’s in front of her.
Her spirit guide is the exotic host of the reality-TV show, played by Italian superstar Monica Bellucci (currently distracting James Bond from the plot of “Spectre”). The distance between Bellucci’s all-world level of dazzle and the humble workings of an apiary make for a peculiar sort of charm, a movie where you have to dig a little to find the honey.
“The Wonders” (3 stars)This is not the tourist’s Tuscany: Meet a beekeeping family, whose hard-working, unglamorous existence is touched by a gaudy reality-TV show looking for a traditional Italian family. Alice Rohrbacher’s film creates considerable charm, seen through the eyes of the family’s oldest daughter. In Italian, with English subtitles.
Rating: Not rated; probably PG-13 for subject matter
Showing: Seven Gables
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
