La Chimera

There is a captivating, joyous pulse that bubbles throughout Alice Rohrwacher’s marvelous fantasy-comedy on the themes of love, loss, and . . . Etruscan antiquities. It’s the 1980s; it’s Tuscany. A lanky Englishman in a grubby white suit (a knock-your-socks-off performance by Josh O’Connor) shows up in a small town after a stint in prison, shacking up in a nearby shantytown. This is Arthur, an archaeological scholar who moonlights as the lynchpin of a rascally, exuberantly colorful gang of grave robbers scavenging for ancient artifacts—which Arthur locates using a dowsing rod. He also desperately yearns to reunite with his beloved Beniamina, daughter of a local aristocrat (the marvelous Isabella Rossellini), his quest for lost love as much spiritual as actual.