Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.
Alice Rohrwacher's fable-like meditation on sainthood, exploitation, and time is genuinely singular — merging neo-realist grit with quietly surreal magic realism in a way that feels utterly its own. The plot's audacious structural break midway through is one of the boldest narrative gestures in recent Italian cinema, earning a real 4. Cinematography by Hélène Louvart is luminous and tactile, evoking both documentary immediacy and timeless myth. Novelty is exceptionally high — there is no other film quite like this. Acting is committed and naturalistic, with Adriano Tardiolo's Lazzaro an unforgettable presence, though the ensemble is uneven. The ending, while thematically resonant and moving, is somewhat abrupt and elusive in ways that may feel unsatisfying rather than purely earned, holding it to a 3.