VERMIGLIO

Cesare is the village schoolteacher whose wife Adele is continually pregnant: he is a white-haired, bespectacled man of fierce standards who also runs an adult literacy class and whose prestige in the community equals and exceeds that of the priest. Cesare is played by Tommaso Ragno, looking in Hollywood terms like a cross between Christopher Plummer and Sam Elliott, with innumerable sons and daughters, of whom Dino is the sulky ne’er-do-well, whose mediocrity and drinking pains him … The oldest is sensitive Lucia whose destiny is unclear, until a fugitive army deserter shows up; this is Pietro. … Delpero shows that their lives could continue perfectly well like this; it is idyllically happy in some ways, an existence lovingly framed with beautiful shots of the snowy landscape in which you can almost feel the bitter, tingling cold …

There is a compelling drama in Vermiglio, conveyed with an almost Hardyesque intensity; the cow-milking scene at the beginning actually put me in mind of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, although there is no one here of a higher or different social class. It is a movie which inhabits its own universe with ease and calm but also widens it to include the audience who are inducted into its mysteries. A lovely film.

The second feature from Italian director Maura Delpero, Vermiglio, is exquisite. There’s a rough, earthy tenderness to the picture and a kinship with other recent examples of Italian folk cinema (including Alice Rohrwacher’s work and Laura Samani’s Small Body), Delpero opts for an unvarnished realism rather than the pagan abandon of some of Rohrwacher’s cinema, but her film shares the sense of exploring a richly realised, self-contained microcosm.

Film Facts

• At the Venice Film Festival 2024, Vermiglio won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize and the Best Italian Film award whilst Martina Scrinzi won the Nuovolmaie Talent Award as Best New Young Actress and Kristian De Martiis received the La Pellicola d’Ora as Best Chief Electrician.
• Vermiglio was Italy’s submission for the Best International Feature Film at this year’s (2025) Oscars.
• The filming locations are in the province of Trento. Vermiglio is a commune in the province of Trento in the northern Italian region Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, located about 40 kilometres northwest of the city of Trento.