Vermiglio (2024)
Don’t you know there’s a war on? At face value, it would be impossible to tell that the tiny Alpine town of Vermiglio was anywhere near a front of any kind, much less that Hitler would soon be making the best decision of his life in a bunker and Mussolini would be hanging upside down. The touches here are more in absences: sons sent to aid the Italian effort. Though there is one palpable symbol in Pietro, the young man from Sicily who deserted and now lives a haunted existence in the overstuffed household of the local schoolteacher. He begins to find love with his new housemate Lucia despite a cool reception from others in the community. Vermiglio is riddled with this kind of quiet trauma, and in a way the end of the war only pours salt in those wounds. People who do not comport themselves in a specific way socially are rejected by others and left adrift in their own suffering. Stoked by intense Roman Catholicism and further aided by the small town dynamic where everyone knows everything, help is unavailable for those who need it, even if the circumstances are out of their control. Pietro may be a bigamist, but members of the family and community at large find ways to make that Lucia’s and her father Cesare’s fault directly, despite their lack of foreknowledge. Silence rules, from the quiet despair of those affected to the steely indifference of those around. Even in Sicily this can be found, as when Lucia travels there for some closure, she happens upon the other woman affected, and shares a quiet grief with her even if they don’t speak. This is hushed, meek, collapsing self-destruction.
Where Maura Delpero’s feature excels is commenting on this while not making the villagers a monolith of hatred. Especially within Cesare’s family there is a wonderful sense of internality, of people going about their struggles in different aspects. Ada negotiates with God over her closeted desire for women, substituting chicken shit for Hail Marys or Our Fathers in her personal Confession booth. It would be humorous were it not so damn sad. She also yearns for the rebellious Virginia, who is wholly out of place in Vermiglio with her boyish haircut and cigarette ash eyeshadow. Cesare yearns for mental stimulation, buying Vivaldi records as his ever-multiplying family struggles to get enough food. His education is a gift for the community but comes commingled with stern and even harsh demeanor, condemning his son to work in the fields out of a perceived lack of effort. His wife, ever-pregnant, strives to provide some balance to this as she adds a modicum of love to the household. Despite all of these difficulties, the youngest children seem to retain a sort of essential innocence, always positing the good and caring little about the societal baggage that things like desertion in war or infidelity imply. All of this is communicated quietly, subtly, rendering characters’ interiors as striking as the sweeping mountain scenery as it passes through the seasons in the film.
THE RULES
SIP
Someone says 'war' or 'epistolary'.
Someone names a geographic location.
People are lying in bed in a scene.
BIG DRINK
Vivaldi composition plays in a scene.
A prayer is said.
Someone goes in for a kiss.












