Safe Return Doubtful

Italy 2023

This is a delightful folk fable that concerns a ramshackle group of Italians in the south of Tuscany who rob graves for a living (tombaroli), specifically Etruscan tombs more than 2,000 years old in search of the treasure they were buried with.

Attention focuses on an Englishman in their midst, a wayward archaeologist Arthur, played by Josh O’Connor, who has made his home in the Tuscan village. As the film begins he is returning to the village by train after a spell in jail. He has the special power, similar to a water diviner, of sensing where the unopened graves of Etruscans lie, but life for him and his friends isn’t easy, they don’t make much money and not looked favourably on by the wider community. Another reason for Arthur’s depressive state is that his beloved, Beniamina, has disappeared, and is rumoured to be dead.

Beniamina’s mother, Flora, lives in a crumbling palazzo with her singing students, a group of women who call her mother. Scenes alternate between the group of tombaroli and the group women, which echo a remark early in the piece that Italian society would be a lot less macho today if the Etruscans had defeated the Romans.

There’s such an amount of loose ends that it would seem impossible to knot them together, but through mythical and historical resonance, in the hands of Alice Rohrwacher the result is a beautiful thing.

The contrast between the groups of men and women is represented in music by Monteverdi’s operas and the traditional folk music of the area. Another reason it gels so well is the underlying humour to it all, carried off with panache by a really strong cast.

IMDb score 7.3 / 10

My score 8 / 10