Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.

Drama Fantasy wolf rural area magic realism sharecropper

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Character

Prestige, contemplative, grave and open-ended.

unpretentiousprestige
contemplativerelentless
gravecomic
resolvedopen-ended
classical in formformally daring

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“Is this Alice Rohrwacher's best work?”
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CinemaSerfon TMDB · Sep 20257/10
Adriano Tardiolo is really good in this biblically apt story of the young “Lazzaro”. He’s a generous-spirited young man who energetically helps out in his community - one under the thumb of the uncaring dominatrix “Marchesa” (Nicoletta Braschi) who treats this agrarian community little better than the animals she describes them as. She has a teenage son “Tancredi” (Luca Chikovani) who, though spoiled, has a bit of a rebellious streak and so when he befriends “Lazzaro” and discovers the young man’s hilltop hideaway, he decides to abscond from his mother and feign a kidnapping. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his mother sees through his wheeze and declines to pay up the ransom but that stalling has the benefit of allowing these two young men to establish what they hope will be an indelible friendship. Then “Lazzaro” takes a bit of a tumble and when he awakens, nothing is as it was. For all but him, decades have gone by and it’s only a chance encounter with childhood friend “Antonia” (Agnese Graziani) and her family of somewhat understandably sceptical scrap merchants and petty thieves that offers him a chance of a new life in the city. He is shy and honest so doesn’t readily fit into their c
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BornKnighton TMDB · Feb 20248/10
A tale (or fable?) of social commentary by directress and writer Alice Rohrwacher (that I first knew in the short "Le Pupille") in rural Italy with touches of anti capitalism and class division, where sharecroppers live, without knowing their semi-slavery state because of lack of knowledge. Lazzaro the protagonist, is an innocent character that is happy to make others happy, in the pureness of his heart. He doesn't know who is his father of mother just who is maybe his grandmother. There are very few signs of when this passes you can guess the 60 or 70's till later you see a cellphone of the 90's. So this is the condition that those people lives. They live under Marchesa Alfonsina De Luna state till one day Lazzaro meets the rebellious son of her, Tancredi, that wants to live away from the rot of his bankrupt family, so he devise a plan. A plan that unwillingly ends ends with and event that throws Lazzaro in the future 20 to 30 years ahead. By chance or destiny he meet robbers in the now decadent rural mansion (not knowing that they are people of his past "family") and in the city where he is recognized by an old female friend (the role is played by the older sister of Rohrwacher,
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SWITCH.on TMDB · Jun 20197/10
‘Happy as Lazzaro’ comes and goes like an airy fable but doesn’t make as much of an impact as it wants to. Through a lack of convincing and earned pivot, its first half in realism drags down the escapism it yearns for in its second half. Its ambition is to be commended and is definitely a film that deserves to be seen, but as a whole is just verging on greatness. - Ashley Teresa Read Ashley's full article... https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-happy-as-lazzaro-more-than-meets-the-eye
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Cast

Adriano TardioloLazzaro
Agnese GrazianiAntonia (young)
Luke ChikovaniTancredi (young)
Alba RohrwacherAntonia
Sergi LópezUltimo
Tommaso RagnoTancredi
Natalino BalassoNicola
Nicoletta BraschiMarchesa Alfonsina De Luna
Carlo MassiminoPippo
Daria Pascal AttoliniMaria Grazia (Adult)

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