A group of aged Italian males sit round consuming purple wine, consuming spaghetti and buying and selling native people tales handed down by their dad and mom and grandparents. It was completely different again then, explains one outdated boy; there was no TV, so folks needed to sit round speaking of a night (although sitting round speaking is exactly what this lot are doing). He tells the story of Luciano, the illegitimate son of a neighborhood physician someday within the nineteenth century. It’s a darkish story, he warns. Although probably not darkish sufficient. What first-time function administrators Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis appear to be going for here’s a Herzogian waking nightmare, however the essential sense of horror and despair by no means absolutely comes off.
Their movie provides us two episodes within the lifetime of legendary Luciano, a drunk who villagers whisper has seen the within of a psychiatric hospital. He’s performed by Gabriele Silli, an artist and painter buddy of the administrators performing right here for the primary time, bringing a tortured Nick Cave high quality to the half – in addition to a pair piercing inexperienced eyes excellent for the a part of a loner who is perhaps half-crazed or a visionary. Luciano is livid with a neighborhood nobleman for locking a picket gate normally left open to let shepherds go. His anger may need one thing to do with being in love with shepherd’s daughter Emma (Maria Alexandra Lungu) – although cinematographer Simone D’Arcangelo’s beautiful pictures of the Italian countryside are way more ravishing than the pair’s deeply un-sensual, mannered romantic scenes.
One thing dramatic occurs, and the motion strikes to Argentina just a few years later, the place the movie goes full Herzog. Luciano is now impersonating a preacher and in search of hidden treasure within the firm of thieving pirates and the crab of the title – a mad folly of an expedition that doesn’t really feel fairly warped sufficient, missing in some way in putting photographs or temper. It by no means fairly comes collectively.
