‘Vermiglio’ Review: A Grave and Gorgeous Hymn to Life and Death in a Midcentury Italian Alpine Village
variety.comJessica Kiang With head bowed, over clasped hands, Italian director Maura Delpero‘s quietly breathtaking “Vermiglio” unfolds from tiny tactile details of furnishings and fabrics and the hide of a dairy cow, into a momentous vision of everyday rural existence in the high Italian Alps.
Far away, the Second World War is ending — an earthshaking event felt here only in abstract ways, because there’s the real labor of community and family to be getting on with, to say nothing of the private work of finding your own path to tread beneath those towering peaks.
To those who live on their slopes, the mountains must be the beginning and end of everything, the amen on every prayer. It is winter and a sleeping household, with two or three to a bed, gradually stirs.
The eldest daughter Lucia (Martina Scrinzi) milks the cow, dreamily resting her face, which she has apparently stolen from a Vermeer painting, against the animal’s warm flank.
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