---
title: "La Chimera"
year: 2023
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/la-chimera"
fi1m_id: "la-chimera"
imdb_id: "tt14561712"
tmdb_id: 837335
wikidata_id: "Q113860622"
fi1m_score: 84
critics_score: 82
critics_reviews: 22
published: "2026-09-09"
updated: "2026-09-18T08:37:59.386969+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# La Chimera (2023)

Directed by Alice Rohrwacher · 2h 11m · MPA NR · Drama, Fantasy, Comedy

## Identity

La Chimera

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/la-chimera
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** la-chimera
- **IMDb ID:** tt14561712
- **TMDB ID:** 837335
- **Wikidata ID:** Q113860622
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14561712/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/837335, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q113860622

**Fi1m score: 84** · Critics 82 from 22 reviews

*In a sentence:* One grubby cream suit, a forked stick, and two and a half thousand years of other people’s belongings

> Alice Rohrwacher’s tale of tomb raiders in 1980s Tuscany is funny, sad and shot with a freedom most films never risk. It wanders for a stretch in the middle, and Josh O’Connor holds it together with a slump and a stare.

## Synopsis

Tuscany, the 1980s. Arthur (Josh O’Connor), an Englishman fresh out of prison, steps off a train and walks back into the small town where his friends are waiting. They are tombaroli, tomb raiders, and Arthur has the gift they need: with a forked stick he can feel where the Etruscan dead lie buried, and he falls over when he finds them. He still calls on Flora (Isabella Rossellini), whose daughter Beniamina (Yile Yara Vianello) he loved and lost, and he begins to notice her housekeeper and pupil Italia (Carol Duarte). What the gang digs up goes to a dealer, Spartaco (Alba Rohrwacher). Alice Rohrwacher writes and directs.

## Review

Arthur (Josh O’Connor) is asleep on a train when we meet him, dreaming of a woman in a white dress with a red thread coming loose from her hem. He wakes and walks back into the small Tuscan town where his friends are waiting and a prison sentence is just behind him. The friends are tombaroli, tomb raiders, and Arthur is the one who finds the tombs. He does it with a forked stick and a sort of fit: the rod dips, his knees go, and he lands flat on his back above two and a half thousand years of somebody else’s belongings. Alice Rohrwacher’s fourth feature is about what Arthur is looking for down there. We recommend it, with the caveat that it runs 131 minutes and does not need all of them.

O’Connor delivers his lines in Italian and plays Arthur as a man who has stopped trying to be liked. The costume is half the performance: a cream suit he never changes and never washes, worn with a scowl that lifts perhaps four times in the whole film. Vincenzo Nemolato’s Pirro and the rest of the gang treat him as a mascot and a meal ticket at once. Isabella Rossellini’s Flora, a singing teacher gone to seed in a villa her daughters would like her out of, treats him as the son-in-law she never got. She is waiting for her daughter Beniamina (Yile Yara Vianello) to come home, and Arthur is the only other person in town who still behaves as if she might.

Carol Duarte’s Italia, Flora’s live-in pupil and skivvy, cannot hold a tune and is hiding two small children upstairs. Duarte plays her with a wide open face and no guile, and the film turns towards her by degrees.

Hélène Louvart shoots on more than one film stock and the frame keeps changing shape: scratchy and boxy for the gang’s night work, wider and softer for the dreams, with no announcement when one gives way to the other. When Arthur finds a tomb the camera goes over with him, so the horizon flips and we are looking at Tuscany upside down. We laughed the first time. By the third we had stopped, because Louvart holds the shot long enough for it to read as a man lying face up on the ground with the dead beneath him, and it got to us. Emita Frigato’s production design gives Flora peeling plaster and dust sheets, and gives Arthur a shack built into the old town wall, so that his bedroom is several centuries older than he is.

Nelly Quettier’s editing is the film’s chief pleasure. She speeds up the gang’s scrambles into silent-comedy scurrying, runs a shot backwards when it suits her, and cuts from a dream into a kitchen with nothing to warn us. A travelling musician turns up between scenes to sing the tombaroli’s exploits in rhymed verse, and Quettier uses him as a chorus. None of it is tidy. All of it is legible, which is rarer.

What does not work is the middle. A long carnival sequence and the gang’s celebrations go on past the point where they tell us anything, and the business with Spartaco (Alba Rohrwacher), the dealer who buys what they dig up, is played broad. The film knows the rich collectors at the end of the chain are the villains and has little to add to that. For twenty minutes or so we were checking how far in we were, and we resented it, because everything either side is so alive.

Rohrwacher has done this before. *Happy as Lazzaro* also let time slip without telling us and also put a holy fool at its centre. This one is looser, warmer and funnier, and more interested in the living. The second half takes a turn we will not describe.

See it in a cinema if you can. The changes in grain and frame carry a good deal of the meaning, and they are the first thing a television smooths away. And do not go expecting a heist film. Nobody in it can plan anything, least of all the man who keeps falling over.

*Fi1m score 84, published 9 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews for La Chimera are warm and closely bunched, with nearly every critic landing somewhere between good and very good. Praise clusters first on Josh O’Connor, whose still, sad-eyed turn as the grieving English tomb-raider is widely called the film’s anchor, and second on Alice Rohrwacher’s mixing of earthy naturalism with folk-tale fantasy. Several critics pick out the light in the Tuscan exteriors, the shifting aspect ratios and the way past and present are folded into one stream; a few name the ending as the film’s high point. The comedy sits easily alongside the melancholy for most.

Reservations are scarce and mostly minor: that it rambles, that some whimsical touches sit oddly. The dissent is small but real. Paste finds it so fanciful it dulls rather than moves, and Eye for Film thinks it never settles into a shape and runs long for what it delivers. Otherwise the consensus is a settled admiration.

## Straight answers

**Is La Chimera worth watching?**

*La Chimera* is worth watching for anyone who likes their comedy sad and their drama loose, and we scored it 84. Alice Rohrwacher's tale of tomb raiders in 1980s Tuscany is funny, sad and shot with a freedom most films never risk, with Josh O'Connor holding it together in one unwashed cream suit. It runs 131 minutes and does not need all of them.

**How long is La Chimera, and what is it rated?**

*La Chimera* runs 2h 11m and is rated NR by the MPA in the US. It is a drama and fantasy film.

**Where can I watch La Chimera in the US?**

*La Chimera* is available to rent from Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV from $3.99. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How violent or frightening is La Chimera, and is it suitable for children?**

*La Chimera* is a UK 15 and not a film for children, though its adult content is grubbiness and grief rather than violence or fright. The tomb raiding is played as scrambling comedy, and nothing in it frightened us. Younger viewers are more likely to be bored by its wandering middle than upset by anything on screen.

**How does La Chimera compare to Journey to Italy?**

*La Chimera* and [*Journey to Italy*](https://film.one/film/journey-to-italy) both put an English lead among Italian ruins with the dead underfoot, but Rohrwacher's film is the looser and funnier of the two. Rossellini's is a painfully recognisable portrait of a marriage coming apart, slow and severe; Rohrwacher's is playful with time, film stock and editing. Both sag in the middle, and *La Chimera* is the warmer evening.

**What should I watch after La Chimera?**

After *La Chimera*, try [*Journey to Italy*](https://film.one/film/journey-to-italy) (1954, Fi1m 82): An English marriage comes apart among Neapolitan ruins; the dead are underfoot here too. Then [*The Tree of Wooden Clogs*](https://film.one/film/the-tree-of-wooden-clogs) (1978, Fi1m 89): Olmi’s Lombard farming families, played by real farmers, across a year; the soil matters here too; and [*Petite Maman*](https://film.one/film/petite-maman) (2021, Fi1m 88): A child meets her mother at her own age; grief handled with the same light touch.

### Reviews we read (30)

- **Radio Times**, Max Copeman (5/5): The critic calls it an eccentric and beguiling drama. They single out O’Connor’s sensational performance as the sad-eyed Brit and the deft balance of comedy and melancholy. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-w8zg0w/la-chimera/)
- **Sight and Sound** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it a joyous, masterful work of folk magic. They single out the transcendent sequence revealing an ancient shrine buried incongruously near a power plant. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/la-chimera-joyous-masterful-work-folk-magic)
- **The New Yorker**, Justin Chang (90/100, inferred): Rohrwacher’s moody and marvellous fourth feature explores a tomb raider’s grief and the moral costs of disturbing the dead through mythic resonance and time-blending storytelling. The critic singles out the sublime ending and the film’s hopeful message about bridging past and present for particular praise. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-current-cinema/the-enchanting-archaeological-romance-of-la-chimera)
- **Slant Magazine**, Jake Cole (3.5/4): Rohrwacher’s wistful parable examines ghosts, time and the ownership of the past through a surly British archaeologist turned tomb-raider. The rueful, melancholic film channels neorealist and Straub-Huillet echoes while balancing satire with a profound sense of historical transience. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/la-chimera-review-josh-oconnor-alice-rohrwacher/)
- **Empire**, Laura Venning (85/100, inferred): The review describes the film as an exquisitely crafted, playful and bewitching contemporary folk tale that melds mischief, myth and melancholy with tactile, wonder-infused imagery. It singles out the director’s distinctive magic and the lead performance for making the story feel alive and emotionally resonant. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/la-chimera/)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Carlos Aguilar (85/100, inferred): Rohrwacher crafts a sun-dappled Italian fable of incandescent beauty about loss, time, and the significance of ancient relics beyond their market value. The critic highlights the film’s exquisite blurring of the tangible and ethereal, along with its playful yet soulful perspective on mortality and legacy. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-03-29/la-chimera-review-alice-rohrwacher-josh-oconnor-isabella-rossellini)
- **RogerEbert.com**, Christy Lemire (85/100, inferred): Rohrwacher delivers a dreamy, magical-realist take on a heist story about tomb raiders in 1980s Italy, with Josh O’Connor’s haunted performance anchoring the film’s blend of whimsy and melancholy. The critic singles out the director’s spellbinding use of light, overlapping dialogue, and shifting aspect ratios for praise while noting some quirky elements feel out of place. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/la-chimera-film-review-2024)
- **IndieWire**, David Ehrlich (B+): Rohrwacher’s third film in her informal trilogy is the most romantic, following a grieving English tomb-raider whose supernatural gift leads him through Italy’s past and present. It is playful, textured and the best Indiana Jones movie of the year. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/la-chimera-review-josh-oconnor-alice-rohrwacher-1234867982/)
- **The AV Club**, Matt Schimkowitz (B+): Rohrwacher’s magical-realist treasure hunt is a funny, deeply satisfying meditation on loss and hope set among Italy’s ruins. O’Connor’s still, silent performance anchors the film’s enchanting, surprising formal delights and exploration of the past belonging to everyone and no one. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/la-chimera-movie-review-1851330073)
- **Financial Times**, Danny Leigh (4/5): The film has everything one would want in an Italian picture, blending visual beauty, comedy and a darker melancholy plot about grave-robbers seeking Etruscan treasure. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/26384473-6c5d-46c4-b7d2-eec8eca599cc)
- **Little White Lies**, Esmé Holden (4/4/5): The critic finds it expansive and shows new ways a movie can be. They single out the destabilising, intuitive style with visual ideas seldom repeated. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/la-chimera)
- **The i Paper**, Francesca Steele (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a surreal yet accessible blend of magical realism and neo-realism that showcases Josh O’Connor as a leading man with crafty, mesmeric energy in the role of a melancholy grave-robbing archaeologist. Rohrwacher is praised for her genre-shifting style and the film’s intriguingly open-ended exploration of history, grief and identity. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/la-chimera-josh-o-connor-review-3046907)
- **Vulture**, Bilge Ebiri (80/100, inferred): The lovely, mysterious film follows a sad-eyed Josh O’Connor as a reluctant grave-robber seeking a passage to the afterlife amid a merry band of tombaroli. Rohrwacher mixes earthy naturalism with playful, ramshackle fantasy in a rich, allusive work rich with Italian cinematic echoes. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/la-chimera-review-josh-oconnor-seeks-the-afterlife.html)
- **Screen Daily** (70/100, inferred): The critic describes it as a strange, messy, resonant film that is part dreamscape, part modern folk tale. They single out its ode to the fragility of beautiful things and cautionary tale about how easily they can be lost. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/la-chimera-cannes-review/5181899.article)
- **Film Comment**, Devika Girish: The critic praises Rohrwacher's fable-like exploration of tomb-robbers in 1980s Italy as a meditation on capitalism's profaning of the sacred and exploitation of the poor. She highlights the film's fluid sense of time and the contrast between the grave-robbers' playful defiance and the shadowy world of wealthy collectors. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/can-you-dig-it-alice-rohrwacher-la-chimera/)
- **The Guardian**, Wendy Ide: Rohrwacher’s film is an extraordinary, beguiling tale of a renegade archaeologist leading a band of tomb-raiders in 1980s Tuscany, with Josh O’Connor giving one of his finest performances as a man torn between past and present. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/12/la-chimera-review-josh-oconnor-dazzles-in-brilliant-tale-of-italian-tomb-raiders)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney: The film is a uniquely magical, lyrically strange blend of folklore, dreams and realism following a band of Etruscan tomb-raiders. Josh O’Connor delivers a superb, haunted performance as the melancholy Englishman searching for a lost love and a portal to the afterlife. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/la-chimera-review-josh-oconnor-alice-rohrwacher-1235501816/)
- **The New York Times**, Manohla Dargis (Critic’s Pick): Alice Rohrwacher’s latest is a dreamy, enchanting film following a tomb raider pining for lost love, filled with magic and a bright red thread that beguiles the viewer. The critic praises its approachable yet elliptical style and Rohrwacher’s singular voice among contemporary filmmakers. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/movies/la-chimera-review-alice-rohrwacher.html)
- **The Telegraph**: Rohrwacher’s ethereally beguiling film follows a grief-stricken Englishman turned grave-robber on a transfixing voyage into the underworld, meditating on honouring the past and the sacred. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/la-chimera-cannes-review-josh-oconnor/)
- **The Times**: Josh O’Connor is compelling as a moody archaeologist sniffing out stolen treasures in a stylish drama set in 1980s Italy. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/la-chimera-film-review-josh-oconnor-wftgjv3lt)
- **Time Out**, Sophie Monks Kaufman (4 out of 5 stars): The critic says Josh O’Connor steals the show in this giddy magical realist carnivalesque. They single out the hybrid beast merging the earthly with the ethereal and O’Connor’s sublime performance. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/la-chimera-2023)
- **Digital Spy**, Mireia Mullor (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it a spellbinding masterpiece and one of the best films of 2024, praising its Fellini-esque daydream quality blending past and present, living and dead. She singles out the lively portrayal of the grave-robbers and Carol Duarte's Italia as the emotional heart amid themes of grief, survival, and collective reclamation. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a60728929/la-chimera-review-josh-oconnor/)
- **The Playlist**, Farah Cheded (A-): The critic praises the film as an enchanting modern myth that uses magical realist touches to comment on greed and history, with a beguiling power that transforms the viewer's perspective. She singles out Rohrwacher's ability to tap into uncorrupted innocence and the spell it casts. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/la-chimera-is-another-enchanting-modern-myth-from-alice-rohrwacher-cannes-20230527/)
- **The Wrap** (90/100, inferred): The critic hails the film as one of the best in Cannes competition, a stunning and lyrical pastoral parable that contemplates time, existence and the afterlife through its whimsical folk-tale approach to grave-robbing and history. They single out the tender cinematography and the film’s philosophical depth on the unknowability of time. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/la-chimera-review-alice-rohrwacher/)
- **Deadline**, Pete Hammond (85/100, inferred): The critic calls Alice Rohrwacher’s film her best yet and one of the strongest in competition, praising it as a splendid, mysterious blend of adventure, heist, love story and spiritual journey. They single out Josh O’Connor’s brilliant lead performance (delivered entirely in Italian) and the director’s fresh take on themes of the past. [Read](https://deadline.com/2023/05/la-chimera-review-josh-oconnor-alice-rohrwacher-cannes-film-festival-1235378061/)
- **Collider**, Chase Hutchinson (8/10): The critic calls it an absolute treasure of a movie that is quietly spellbinding and one of the most interesting films of the year. They single out its subtly explosive finale that combines flashes of painful past and path forward. [Read](https://collider.com/la-chimera-review/)
- **The Skinny**, Carmen Paddock (4/5): The critic finds it an ethereal meditation on personal histories and collective belonging, commending Josh O'Connor's masterful, heartbreaking performance balancing kindness, curiosity, and volatile grief. She highlights the hazy, sun-drenched cinematography and inventive techniques that fold multiple timelines into one stream. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/new-releases/la-chimera-alice-rohrwacher)
- **Paste**, Brianna Zigler (5.8/10): The critic finds it a sweet but overly fanciful tale of life, love, and death that is beautifully crafted and gorgeous to look at. They single out its playful camerawork but note it lulls the viewer into emotional sedation. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/alice-rohrwacher/la-chimera-review)
- **Eye for Film**, Jennie Kermode (35/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a hybrid of forms and themes that never quite succeeds or finds a solid identity, describing it as rambling and narratively unsatisfying despite visual strengths and good ideas. She singles out a moving moment of aesthetic awe as insufficient to justify the length. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/la-chimera-2023-film-review-by-jennie-kermode)
- **Film Stories**, Maria Lattila: The critic calls Rohrwacher a master of blending supernatural elements with the mundane and praises the film's magical realism combined with everyday life. She singles out its profound effect on themes of loneliness and love after reflection. [Read](https://filmstories.co.uk/reviews/la-chimera-review-a-subtly-splendid-tale-of-grief-and-graverobbing/)

## Details

- **Director:** Alice Rohrwacher
- **Director:** Alice Rohrwacher
- **Writer:** Alice Rohrwacher
- **Cinematography:** Hélène Louvart
- **Editor:** Nelly Quettier
- **Production design:** Emita Frigato
- **Producer:** Carlo Cresto-Dina, Pierre-François Piet, Paolo Del Brocco
- **Cast:** Josh O'Connor as Arthur; Carol Duarte as Italia; Alba Rohrwacher as Spartaco; Isabella Rossellini as Flora; Vincenzo Nemolato as Pirro; Lou Roy-Lecollinet as Melodie; Giuliano Mantovani as Jerry; Gian Piero Capretto as Mario
- **Runtime:** 2h 11m
- **Certificate (MPA):** NR
- **Release (the US):** 29 March 2024
- **Genres:** Drama, Fantasy, Comedy
- **Budget:** $10 million
- **Box office:** $5 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkIC8YI9-eU

## Where to watch in the US

- Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd
- Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $7.99, hd
- Apple TV: buy $7.99, hd

*Checked 2026-09-10.*

Also available in: AT, AU, BR, CA, CH, DE, ES, FR, GB, IE, IN, IT, JP, MX, MY, NZ, PH, SG, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Happy as Lazzaro* (2018): Rohrwacher’s previous film, where time slips without warning and a holy fool walks through it
- *Journey to Italy* (1954), Fi1m 82: An English marriage comes apart among Neapolitan ruins; the dead are underfoot here too — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/journey-to-italy.md)
- *Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives* (2010): Thai ghosts join the family at dinner, and nobody thinks to make a fuss
- *The Tree of Wooden Clogs* (1978), Fi1m 89: Olmi’s Lombard farming families, played by real farmers, across a year; the soil matters here too — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-tree-of-wooden-clogs.md)
- *Petite Maman* (2021), Fi1m 88: A child meets her mother at her own age; grief handled with the same light touch — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/petite-maman.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/la-chimera