Happy As Lazzaro
Nominated for the 2019 European Film Award People’s Choice Award.
Lazzaro is the kind soul who helps anyone in his village, which is cut off from the outside world by a bridge that no one has the energy to fix. The inhabitants of the village are serfs to the Marchesa, whose son drafts Lazzaro into a kidnapping plot that quickly goes awry. Following up The Wonders, Alice Rohrwacher offers a beautiful freewheeling fable that has the timeless quality of a folk tale but also brings to mind Pasolini and Fellini. Happy as Lazzaro has the brightness of a summer’s day, but also dark shade to luxuriate in.
★★★★★ “Alice Rohrwacher’s enigmatic drama is an unsettling and moving satire about the unquestioning toil of peasants’ lives.” -Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
★★★★★ “Could be a biting social commentary, a religious parable or a beguiling, supernatural tale. Perhaps it is all three” - Alexandra Pollard, The Independent
★★★★★ “Alice Rohrwacher could be Italian cinema’s salvation.” - Tim Robey, The Telegraph