The Wonders

“Rohrwacher’s vivid story of teenage yearning and confusion revolves around a beekeeping family in rural central Italy: German-speaking father, Italian mother, four girls. Two unexpected arrivals prove disruptive, especially for the pensive oldest daughter. The father takes in a troubled teenage boy as part of a welfare program, and a television crew shows up to enlist local farmers in a kitschy celebration of Etruscan culinary traditions (a slyly self-mocking Monica Bellucci plays the bewigged host). Louvart’s lensing combines a documentary attention to daily ritual with an evocative atmosphere of mystery to conjure a richly concrete world that is subject to the magical thinking of adolescence.”