Bow your heads, Italian director Moeira Porcini’s immerse thin ‘Vermiglio’ begins with the daunting effects of WW2, portrayed with lowkey but powerful cinematography of cross hands, pillows, coffee skins, and a dairy cow. So as can be imagined by sheer community and family labor, which was only accompanied by the sheer desire to accomplish something while being restrained within those hug-denuding peaks, community and family were the need of the hour. But to those who dwelled around these hills, it was a mere religious prayer, which blended with the legacy of those mountains.
And then there’s winter, where the sound of her mother ‘Adele’ and Simon scolding and coaxing her never-ending entourage of seven children shapes the narrative. During the turns, you can see gripping shots of Lucia gently leaning against a cow, She made herself look striking by fasting Vermeer, her soothing face brought an alien warmth to the cold. For breakfast, Roberta Rovelli (her mother) used to dish out warm heated milk along with large slices of dipping bread.
Instantaneously, the jostling kids (mostly non-professionals providing casual realism) position themselves in size order at the stocky table around which so much of this family’s life revolves. At its head, there is always Caesar (Tommaso Ragno), Adele’s husband, stern but not entirely lacking in love, the patriarch with the loud voice of one who is not accustomed to being refused, who manages the only school building in that area and where all his children but the youngest, his delicate infant, are treated in the same way irrespective of their ages.
There are times when a family member gets together with a community, plays, or when the father brings his treasured phonograph to the classroom and shows his pupils how to hear a summer day in Vivaldi’s music, which breaks the colorless routine of home life washing the furniture. Mikhail Krichman captured the transformative actions and rest of each family member in turn with his remarkable high strict still stunning and tranquil camera.
Although other characters are almost fully described like eldest son Dino (Patrick Gardner) who is sullen and petulant towards his father, flirtatious neighbor Virginia (Carlotta Gamba) seems to muddle the sexuality of the roles being taken, closer attention is gradually given to Caesar s daughters. For instance, Amanda Thaler plays Flavia, the intelligent one who seems to be given a shot at decency because of being well educated, something that very few in her family are. Then there is West Ada, portrayed by Rachele Potrich who can easily be made out as the dark one, with an odd book detailing her own atonements for the time spent behind a wardrobe door while busy touching herself. And then there is the stunning Lucia who is infatuated with a Sicilian soldier, Pietro, played by Giuseppe De Domenico who did save Lucia’s uncle’s life and they now are both hiding in a village.
Lucia and Pietro’s romance is expressed through a series of naive-expressive glances, several fumbles and hand movements, and ungrammatical love letters sent by the young stranger from different provinces and dialects through the bedroom window of a somewhat deeply related family to him. On the other hand, older men who were ageless and were not in need of military service started meeting and discussing the reason for concealing the stranger. A Bombastic man who is intoxicated screams “Deserters are nothing but cowards!” Whereas Calusar remarks in a gentle voice “If only they were all cowards, there wouldn’t be any war.”
A wedding will take place and soon someone will be looking forward to the expansion of the family, everything here is quite difficult and tragedy is part of life, but nevertheless, when one calamitous event takes place it is always something else, unanticipated.
Mattei’s editing seems to be deliberate by zooming in and out; for instance, when Adele is shown anxiously putting cabbage leaves on her sick child, the snowfalling shot is also played. This slight glimpse into Mattei’s past is complemented by another casual flash of Adele, saying a few words at a small cross, while she is shown in the past being pregnant. However, a significant aspect of this film is its ‘economy’ as stated by the authors; From Mattei’s perfectionist close up shots to Andrea Cavalletto’s antique yet modernistic costumes to Matteo Franceschini’s simple warm piano tones all blend well together with the theme of controlled emotionalism that might have otherwise been difficult for Delpero to achieve. This balance is reached thanks to Delpero’s, and sort of her character’s, ability to feel while monitoring themselves with an almost ruthless discipline. This adds to the narrative’s compelling ambivalence which, despite its clear cinematic approach, is a contradiction in itself; however, here in the clean mountainous atmosphere, you can see no end regardless of how high up you are.
Generations in a family along with handed down history carry holes which matter to be completed by a descendant and that’s the reason why none of us has to venture deep into our backgrounds.
The bold and titillating “Vermiglio” is an exceptional piece set in the past but engages with the notion of the “multiverse” completely believing the mountains kept them safe and narrates in the present tense, which is not quite omniscient but rather a God-like aura encompassing the mother’s siblings as well as future girls.
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