The setting for Maura Delpero’s second feature is a sleepy wartime village in the Italian Alps, but the languid nature of the film is so soporific it borders on anesthetizing; indeed when the credits finally roll, it might be worth checking yourself for scars and other signs of organ harvesting.
Technically, it is a marvel of period filmmaking, an immersive view of la vida rustica so bursting with authenticity that it may inspire more enthusiastic viewers to put on a folk hat and get a job in a heritage museum working the spinning jenny.
Others may not be so gripped by its drawn-out drama; box-office blockbuster material it is not. The year is 1944, and the war in Europe is still in bloom, with no end in sight.
The center of Vermiglio, the village that gives the film its title, is the local school, which is presided over by the ever-so-slightly draconian but certainly patriarchal head teacher Caesar (Tommaso Ragno).
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