Between dog and wolf, In Chiara is deployed between ultra-realism and galvanizing dream segments, making it one of the most prominent films of this year 2022. Back to the latest feature film by Jonas Carpignano.
The new Carpignano
Fouling many short films between 2006 and 2014 as well as two long films, the filmography of the young Jonas Carpignano fabric of a third film with In Chiara. Presented at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes in 2021, he was acclaimed by critics and offered a theatre release in April 2022. Since it has recently been available on DVD via the editor Blaq Out, it is now high time to return to this landmark film of the past year.
The feature film begins in a provincial city of Calabria, a region of southern Italy located just above Sicily. Chiara, 16 years old, participates like her whole family on the birthday of her older sister, in an opulent party that will bring the whole clan together. Yet, after the old woman's jealousy comes the hangover: indeed, the next day her father disappeared in troubled circumstances. The opportunity for Chiara to leave alone, and to see the real story of his family.
From Realism to Onirism
A Chiara begins with long scenes filmed from a camera that sticks to the bodies. Carpignano's eye, troubling with feverish realism, embraces the crowd of this anniversary, captures exchanges of views and discussions interspersed with music. Yet, gradually, the eyes burst with an alcoholic veil, men huddle, the queens of the evening evaporate. Of these scenes with a banal appearance, a tension arises that will no longer leave the feature film until its conclusion. Not without recalling how Rodrigo Sorogoyen makes conflict in the interpersonal relations of his recent As Bestas, Carpignano does not build a crescendo tension but a bag and resac that will cross the entire feature.
Between the ripped ribs, puffed by concrete, and its filthy alleyways of abandoned city, Chiara is lost in his family past, also eaten. Yet, between these moments imbued with a quasi-documentary realism, Carpignano allows pieces of absolutely Dansque Donirism. Like this central sequence plan, with disturbing lighting, marking the tipping point of the feature film that then becomes underground: hidden passages, narrow corridors, underground caches... The truth, in Calabria, seems decidedly to bury itself far away from the surface.
A B.O. with little onions
But impossible to evoke In Chiara Without letting go of his original tape. Reflecting what is inundating the ears of the Chiara generation and underlying, like a mirror worn to the spectators, the emotions of the main protagonist, the music composed by Benh Zeitlin and Dan Romer never falls into the oversighting. A notable eclecticism, ranging from the late Burkinabé Black So Man to pure Italian rap, she intersperses long moments of almost total silence that reinforce the dive into the image.
Family Casting
It remains to be greeted the game of the main actress, a 15 year old novice turning here his very first film: Swamy Rotolo. Bearing much of the feature film on her shoulders, she perfectly embodies this teenage girl shaken by her father's disappearance, including increasingly persistent rumors about the ‘Ndrangheta, the local mafia. It must be said that at the casting she is surrounded by her family, which may partly explain the crazy accuracy of their interpretations.
« I got to know her better and I rewritten the script with her in mind. In the film, all the characters are family. »
To discover at the mouth of the Calabria trilogy of Carpignano, including In Chiara is the last come after Mediterranean (2015) and In Ciambra (2017), the feature film, in its physical version, develops an exchange between the director and his main actress of half an hour, shot during the Directors' Fortnight. A film of a crazy grandeur, which puts water in the mouth as to the continuation of career of Jonas Carpignano.
Data sheet
DVD Zone B (France)
Publisher: Blaq Out
Duration: 116 min
Release Date: 06 September 2022
Video format : 576p/25 - 1.85
Soundtrack Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0
Subtitles French
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