The action unfolds over four seasons in the village of Vermiglio in the high Italian Alps at the end of World War II, following the everyday lives of a large family living a now vanished rural existence. The film follows a formalism that links it to other earlier art forms in its restraint and its beautiful use of colour.
Delpero in her statement said: “Vermiglio is a landscape of the soul, a “family lexicon” that lives inside me, on the threshold of the unconscious, an act of love for my father, his family and their small village. Travelling through a personal time, it wants to pay homage to a collective memory.”
Most of all the film is ravishing to watch in its mountain scenery and the fabric of rural existence that it builds through simplicity and details of daily life. The scenes remind of Italian painting and form a unified stylistic whole. The camera work of cinematographer Mikhail Krichman deserves its own award.
The film opens in winter and we see the family begin to wake and begin their daily round of work milking the cows and sharing their breakfast as the mother Adele played by Roberta Rovelli serves the hot milk to her seven children along with large chunks of homemade bread. The family is headed by its stern but loving father Caesar played by Tommaso Ragno, who is also the village school master. Delpero has found non-professional actors to play the children which only adds to the naturalness of the film.
The life of the village is isolated but complete in itself and the events of the outside world seem far away. But all that changes when a runaway refugee soldier Pietro, played by Giuseppe de Domenico, arrives and is hidden by the family bringing the realities of the Second World War to the village. Pietro falls in love with Caesar’s daughter Lucia played by Martina Scrinzi and the shy and fumbling love grows between the two young people, but this innocent love will eventually have major repercussions.
Delpero cut her teeth making documentaries before making her feature film debut and there is a real documentary feel to the life of the village while at the same time the beauty of the colours and the stylistic quality of the images give the film an otherworldly feel. Her previous feature film Maternal was a critically well regarded drama but with Vermiglio she has put herself on the directors to watch map.
Vermiglio ( Italy / France / Belgium)
Directed by Maura Delpero
Cast: Tommaso Ragno, Giuseppe De Domenico, Roberta Rovelli, Martina Scrinzi, Orietta Notari, Carlotta Gamba, Santiago Fondevila Sancet, Rachele Potrich, Anna Thaler, Patrick Gardener, Enrico Panizza, Luis Thaler, Simone Bendetti and Sara Serraiocco
