Film Shapes

Prolific writer/director, Alice Rohrwacher brings us this 1980s-set tale of a gang of Tombaroli, petty crims who steal artefacts from Etruscan tombs to sell on the black market. Their nominal leader, Arthur, returns to his shack, barnacled onto the side of an imposing castle city somewhere Tuscany. He has been 'away' and clearly has the major hump, if his reactions to his old crew have any bearing. The one person he wants to see is Flora, the mother of his absent girlfriend. It's in this run-down mansion that we meet, Italia, a slightly hesitant, slightly careless music student of Flora. So far, so good, but after this promising start, the films sadly peters out a bit. Josh O'Connor plays Arthur, an Englishman with a talent for dowsing archaeological sites, and he's asked to pull miserable for most of the journey. There's not much else to him and this lack of range doesn't help the film as a whole, unfortunately. Isabella Rossellini, on the other hand is fan...