Directed by Alice Rohrwacher | Italy/Switzerland | Italian/French/German w/ English subtitles | 2015 | Fiction | 110 mins
Winner Grand Prix Cannes Film Festival
Film Source: Oscilloscope
The mysteries of adolescence have seldom been as lyrically rendered as in Alice Rohrwacher’s gentle coming-of-age tale The Wonders. The central character is a 12-year-old girl named Gelsomina (a nod to the Federico Fellini classic La Strada), who enters her eccentric family of working-class beekeepers in a reality TV talent competition without the permission of her stern father. The carnival spirit of Fellini is present in Rohrwacher’s poetic and occasionally surreal compositions, but it’s also a highly personal film, with autobiographical aspects drawn from her childhood in central Italy. With warm, sun-drenched cinematography and a documentary-like accuracy in its meticulous depiction of the intricacies of beekeeping, The Wonders is a strikingly nuanced work from a young director with a mature cinematic eye.