Parky At the Pictures (10/1/2025)
(Review of Vermiglio)
VERMIGLIO.
Having established herself with the documentaries, Teachers (2008) and Nadea and Sveta (2012), Maura Delpero made an impressive start to her fictional career with Maternal (2019). The theme of motherhood also proves central to her sophomore outing, Vermiglio, which is being previewed ahead of its release by CinemaItaliaUK. In addition to drawing on Delpero's own family history, this study of rustic life in the shadow of the Alps in the mid-1940s also evokes the neo-realist precision of Luchino Visconti and Ermanno Olmi. Surely, there can be no higher praise.
Schoolteacher Cesare Graziadei (Tommaso Ragno) had nine children with his wife, Adele (Roberta Rovelli). They sleep several to a bed in a comfortable house on the other side of the snowy woods from the school, where children of all ages receive the same lessons after morning prayers and exercise. Strict and sonorous, the white-haired Cesare presides over the table, while Adele ladels out the cupfuls of warm milk that are eaten for breakfast with hunks of dipping bread.
It's a simple lifestyle, with daughter Lucia (Martina Scrinzi) rising each morning to milk the cow. She has taken a shine to Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico), a Sicilian deserter who is beiing allowed to hide out in the cowshed after helping the wounded Attilio (Santiago Fondevila Sancet) back home to his mother, Cesira (Orietta Notari), who is Cesare's sister. Some in the village despise them for fleeing the Germans. But Cesare insists there would be fewer wars if everyone embraced cowardice.
Whenever the opportunity arises, adolescent daughter Ada (Rachele Potrich) hides behind the mirrored door of the wardrobe to touch herself. She always prays for forgiveness afterwards and is cross when younger sister Flavia (Anna Thaler) kneels beside her. She is the brightest child and often sneaks into her father's study to peruse the books. Occasionally, she has to hide under the desk when he comes in to play records on his wind-up gramophone, but this only adds to the thrill of learning in secret.
A dance and a torchlight ceremony are held to celebrate St Lucia's feast day. Lucia's friend, Virginia (Carlotta Gamba), draws gasps of disapproval for her unladylike behaviour, as she gulps down some wine. But Piero is refused a drink and Lucia follows him out to the well to give him a chaste compensatory kiss. Cesare is worried that son Dino (Patrick Gardner) is drinking too much, while Adele is concerned by his baby brother Giovanni's persistent cough.
Cesira recommends wrapping the child in cabbage leaves, but the doctor warns Cesare that the boy will die. Dino tells his younger brother, Pietrin (Enrico Panizza), that Giovanni will fly to heaven with the wings on his soul, but he is unable to answer when pushed to explain what he means. At Christmas, Pietrin asks permission to leave the table to show Pietro the crib that Dino has carved. Lucia notes how kind he is to her sibling and cherishes the heart note that he had passed to her outside church. Flavia and Ada discuss its significance in bed and deduce that he drew the shape because he's illiterate. But this doesn't bother Lucia, as she has fallen in love.
Cesare learns of the note when Flavia writes about it in an essay on letters and he tries to reach out to Pietro when he comes to an adult learning class and they discuss a poem about dying soldier. Ada sees Pietro and Lucia kissing outside the barn and reprimands herself in the notebook she hides under her pillow about the punishments she devises each time she goes behind the wardrobe door. She says nothing of this to her sisters, but they gossip in bed at night and Ada strokes Flavia's wrist with a feather as Lucia describes how she holds Pietro's hand. When Flavia reveals that their father keeps secrets hidden in a locked desk drawer, Ada opines that men are secretive and suggests that those who return from war keep the most to themselves.
Cesare realises that his daughters are bright, but can only afford to send one to school. He chooses Flavia, but Ada is keen to continue studying and tells Don Giulio (Leone Gubert) in confession. She has reached the stage of lying with her face in chicken poop because of her `sins' and Flavia wonders why she doesn't just say `Hail Marys' instead. Lucia sleeps with Pietro, who asks Cesare for her hand in marriage during a lesson on hopes for the future.
Spring comes and Cesare takes the children into the woods to pick flowers for Lucia's wedding. Adele realises she's pregnant when she measures her for her old dress, but Lucia still doesn't understand what she's supposed to do in bed when she discusses her nuptials on her last night sharing with her sisters. She's touched when her younger brothers recite a blessing at the altar and enjoys dancing with her groom at the outdoor reception. But Flavia notices how dismissive everyone is of the tomboyish Virginia and she follows her into the cowshed to see her smoking.
Virginia urges Ada to rebel and steal cigarettes from her father's desk. However, the discovery of a book of pornographic postcards in a drawer leads her to sin again and her self-inflicted penance is to eat chicken poop. As she emerges from the coop, she hears Cesare tutoring Flavia and realises that her chances of staying in school are over. Much to the pregnant Adele's annoyance, Cesare buys a recording of Vivaldi's `The Four Seasons' and the children hang on his every word, as he explains the music to them.
The war ends and Pietro asks permission to return to Sicily to let his mother know he's still alive. Lucia has misgivings, but he departs and soon reneges on his promise to write. Ada and Dino also experience disappointment when Cesare gives them their report cards and breaks the news that Ada's schooldays are over and that the failing Dino needs to grow up and take responsibility for himself. Alone at home, Ada prays for forgiveness for being jealous of Flavia and accepts that she is not as special as she had hoped she would be.
Adele is angry with Cesare for making Dino feel small in front of the class, but he is unrepentant. Indeed, when Adele gives birth to another son and thanks Dino for bringing her flowers, she admonishes Cesare for never bringing her a single bloom when he accuses Dino of stealing from a neighbour's garden. He is furious with her for disrespecting him in front of their children, but Lucia still trusts him when he reassures her that letters often go missing and that she should be patient with Pietro. Even Ada says nothing about his collection of nude pictures, as she finds them as tantalising as Virginia, with whom she has regular assignations to watch her smoke while sitting on the family donkey.
She's saddened when Virginia and her mother leave for Chile, despite Dino reassuring his siblings that nothing would change. His brothers worship him because he once escaped from a bear, but he is frustrated because he fears he'll be stuck at home and condemned to working in the fields. Lucia is also becoming increasingly concerned about Pietro and even Cesare confides to Adele that the silence is ominous.
Shortly afterwards, they spot a story in a newspaper that Pietro has been murdered by his wife in Sicily. Cesira blames Attilio for bringing him to the village and not knowing that he was a bigamist. He is only grateful to Pietro for saving his life, but the rest of the family is crushed by the news. Flavia decides that men have it easier than women and asks Ada if she would like to be male. She replies that she would like to be a priest because everyone listens to them.
Attilio apologises to Lucia after she hears Cesira grumbling about her being a burden now she can't work and has given them another mouth to feed. She lets her mother nurse Antonio, which she often leaves to cry because she feels nothing for him. Meanwhile, Ada gets frustrated because her father is too preoccupied to tutor her and she fears that getting her first period will prevent her from going to school in the nearby town. However, seeing her sister so upset, Flavia decides to stay and help her with the baby. But Ada (who is now aware of Cesare's limitations) points out that she needs to leave because their father only knows how to teach young children.
Having left Antonio at the convent where Ada is now a novice, Lucia travels alone to Sicily. The local priest gives her the letters that Pietro had never posted and she sees his wife and son in the village. Returning home, she bonds with her baby before leaving to work in town. Cesare gets a letter from Ada at her new school, while Adele tidies up the girls' bedroom, with a lingering hand on her belly suggesting that she is pregnant again. Life goes on - as, indeed, it does in audio behind the closing credit crawl.
Impeccably played by a combination of experienced and non-professional performers, this is a compelling study of the status of women within Italian society that will have far too much relevance for many modern audiences. Such is the finesse of Maria Delpero's writing and direction, however, that there's nothing laboured or sententious about either the storyline or presentation of the themes.
Environment and circumstances already limit the prospects of Cesare and Adele's daughters. But they are further hindered by the benevolent dictatorship of their father, a big fish in a small pond, who gets to make the defining decisions about their lives in spite of his own intellectual and emotional shortcomings. He's played with suitably inflated dignity by Tommaso Ragno. Yet, he's not a bad man. Admittedly, his views on women are far from enlightened, embodied as they are in the book he keeps in a drawer that is locked with a key he carelessly hides under a rug in his study. But he opposes the war and seems to set greater store by Vivaldi than Mussolini. Nevertheless, his skills as both a husband and a parent fall short, while Ada recognises his limitations as an educator. Cesare is aware of such flaws, but his situation suits him too much for him to do anything about them.
His deficiencies doom Dino and probably his younger brothers. But Flavia and Ada (who is superbly played by Rachele Potrich) manage to find their own escape routes, while Lucia is astute enough to realise that her misfortunes have given her options. Even Adele finds it within herself to stand up to her husband and criticise his decision to spend their restricted resources on records rather than food. But she also loves him enough to offer solace when he's confronted by the consequences of his inadequacies.
Such is the intensity of Delpero's focus on the Graziadeihousehold that it's not easy to get a hold on wider life in Vermiglio or whether it's a microcosm of Fascist Italy or an exception to it. Lucia's excursion offers no clues, while Pietro and Attilio have been too stunned by their experience of the cruel world to provide any insights. Contrast this with the way in which Edgar Reitz allowed outside events to impinge upon daily life in Schabbach in Heimat (1984). But Delpero still draws parallels between attitudes across the generations. Although a little more evidence of the harshness of existence outside the family might not have gone amiss, she also creates an entirely credible milieu from the deft accumulation of acutely observed details, with the aid of production designers Pirra Jesús Lorenzo and Vito Giuseppe Zito, as well as costumier Andrea Cavalletto and cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, who reinforces the intimacy of the bedtime chats with the same finesse he brings to the austere views of the mountains that loom over the enclosed community and isolate it across the changing seasons from what lies beyond.