Romantic, tragic, and beautiful, Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio is a captivating period piece with a wonderful feel for its place and time. Every scene is composed as a sonnet, beautifully photographed in desaturated, painterly tones, and filled with emotion. Toward the end of the Second World War, in a high, remote mountain village in the Italian Alps, the arrival of a refugee soldier alters the dynamics of an isolated community. Told in four chapters, each set in a different season, this affecting, quiet film is a masterful exercise in subtlety and absence. The waning war is far away but always felt; each character is trying to conceal their personal shame and trauma; letters with news from those who have left are never delivered. At the center is a large family, headed by a stern, conflicted patriarch who runs the village’s school. When his eldest daughter, Lucia, falls for the young Sicilian soldier, everything starts to change for the family, and Delpero tracks each family member with patience and a rare sensitivity as they are carried by forces beyond their control. ~OO