The 'medieval' tale charting the
relationship between a peasant and a local aristocrat Happy As
Lazzaro, by Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher, was applauded
for 10 minutes when it premiered on Sunday night at the Cannes
Film Festival.
Rohrwacher, 35, is competing for a Palme d'Or with her
class-divide film after winning the Grand Prix in 2014 with The
Wonders.
"I finished the movie only on Wednesday, coming here was a
real bet and I didn't expect anything", she said, describing her
third feature film as "bizarre and free".
The director dedicated her movie's successful debut to
Ermanno Olmi, the Italian director who won the Palme d'Or for
his 1978 film The Tree of Wooden Clogs who died earlier this
month at 86.
"We miss his insight", she said.
"I had the strong desire to show him the film but
unfortunately I didn't make it on time".
In Happy As Lazzaro, a rich aristocrat in the 1980s takes
advantage of her estate's isolation in central Italy to practice
sharecropping, keeping her unpaid workers unaware of their
rights.
Rohrwacher's tale, which appears to embrace recent history
and the the Middle Ages, is seen through the eyes of a young
peasant, Lazzaro, interpreted by Adriano Tardiolo in his first
role.
Lazzaro is a good soul who defies rationality in a story that
straddles the present and past and has a strong religious
undertone, Alice Rohrwacher said.
"Lazzaro doesn't judge but has unconditional confidence" in
people, the director told ANSA.
She said the film's inspirations included, "in the
prehistoric sense of the term" the story of Saint Francis, as
well as "a book for children that has enchanted me, by Chiara
Frugoni, in which a wolf doesn't eat the protagonist because he
is good, something that happens to Lazzaro".
"Sharecropping only ended in 1982 and I experienced that time
and wanted to talk about this memory of farming before it
disappears", also said Rohrwacher.
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