“A Chiara” Review!
Director: Jonas Carpignano
Director Jonas Carpignano's "A Chiara" is an upcoming story and a mafia thriller. "A Chiara" is about organized crime in southern Italy from the unique perspective of a teenage girl named Chiara (Swami Rotolo). Her world turns upside down after her father disappears and she falls into a rabbit hole after discovering that he is a member of the 'Nrgheta Crime Syndicate'.
In "A Chiara", director Carpignano applies his lens to the lower strata of society in the seaside town of Reggio Calabria through a teenage girl. Chiara's family, mainly created by the Rotolo family, is no actor other than Swamy, who appeared as Chiara in the director's previous film "A Siambra", but has no other screen credits. . Father Claudio is played by Claudio Rotolo, Uncle Antonio Antonio Rotolo, and Gracia, Georgia Rotolo, and Chiara's sisters, Julia and Georgia.
There is certainly an easy, comfortable, and emotional closeness between families, but their performances, especially the performances of Swami Rotolo, are remarkable. She moves the film, and in two hours you inevitably see her grow, from a light-hearted 15-year-old to a sensible woman who knows the dark ways of the world. The essence of the film is to see and learn from Chiara, and seeing Swami Rotolo is just a miracle. With her dark eyes and eyebrows, she gives a really sharp face like all the best Italian actresses who have come before her.
At Giulia's 18th birthday party, director Carpignano introduced us to the world of the Guerrero family. It is a long, happy, and festive scene with the dynamics of a small family, the love rivalry between Chiara and Giulia, the close relationship with the girl's father, the calm but arrogant man, and the low participation, and Chiara's conflicts. Her uncle threatens to call her father a smoker.
The party scene envelops the audience with a sense of warm security, a bubble, dramatically infiltrating, and in an almost surreal fashion, Chiara watches a car as she wanders the streets anxiously to get to and from her home later that night. Bombing. There is Chiara before the explosion and Chiara after the explosion, and she will never go back to who she was before.
Chiara's mother Carmella (Carmela Fumo) assures her daughters that their father is doing chores, but when a car bombing in Chiara stumbles upon a defamatory news story on social media, she sets out on a journey to find out where she is. Although her mother and older sister maintain the mafia code of Omerta, Chiara is made more frustrated and more curious by her father.
Director Carpignano and cinematographer Tim Kurt lock the audience into Chiara's subjective experience. Kurt's handheld camera zooms in on Chiara's friends and family and even falls off the horizon at times when she feels misguided and confused. As the plot progresses, the camera begins to follow her as she walks around town, listening intently to her ponytail and asking her to answer in places where she is not allowed.
We always go back a bit to maintain the conversation, relationships, and details, and Chiara imitates the process she goes through herself as she tries to gather information about her father from her community. When she finds a tunnel leading to an underground bunker, there are moments of dream-like surrealism that make you question what is actually happening on the screen, underlining how strange the experience can be for him. Combined with American pop music played at gyms, birthday parties, and on car radio, Dan Romer gives ambient and glowing scores to the proceedings. Sometimes the score drops, and Chiara's emotion freezes or rings in her ear as she separates.
Ultimately, Chiara has to make a choice about a life inherited through blood and perhaps an existence that may be different. She uses her limited agency to uncover the life she was born into unknowingly, and with full knowledge, she is able to make that choice herself impossible.
In "A Chiara", director Carpignano once again explores the region's major political and cultural issues with a close and intimate character focus. In the poetically and humanly drawn "A Chiara", he manages to turn mafia cinema upside down, and in doing so, challenges the myths that reinforce these shadow systems.
Please watch the trailer:
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