‘Vermiglio’ Review – An Italian Family Navigates Growth During Wartime In Maura Delpero’s Elegant Sophomore Feature

As the sun creeps over the peak of a nearby snowcap, beds that were once occupied by two to three siblings empty out as the brothers and sisters make their way downstairs, joining the rest of their sprawling family. Living in close quarters within a cozy home in their mountain village of Vermiglio has been the long-time norm for Cesare (Tommaso Ragno), the local schoolteacher; his wife, Adele (Roberta Rovelli); and their seven children, with an eighth on the way. Their eldest, Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), spends the wee hours of the morning milking the family’s cow in their nearby barn; this, it seems, will be breakfast. Later, Adele boils the milk and doles it out, scoop by scoop, into each child’s mug, the line they form resembling what we might be accustomed to seeing in a school cafeteria, or perhaps a soup kitchen.

When this family, for which we never learn of a last name, is not at home, they are in one of two places: Church or school. Cesare’s classroom hosts students of all ages, a number of them being his own children. The church is a similar sort of melting pot, always chock-full of familiar faces, as the village can’t be much larger than a neighborhood. Things and people of foreign origin may not be considered threatening to its populace, but they aren’t necessarily welcome, either. It’s only after a man named Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico) comes to town after deserting the second World War that this idyll is disrupted, and later, that tragedy bleeds into a community that, despite the trials of wartime, had made do with its uncertainties and challenges due to its tight-knit nature. 

But before Pietro’s arrival practically splits the faction in two, Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio – named after the village in which its events unfold entirely – is sure to endear us to its central family, yet not to such painstaking lengths that would make the Italian director’s sophomore feature feel forced in its pathos. Instead, the picture drops us into their environment in the midst of their everyday routines, and we take the form of flies on the walls (or windowpanes, nightstands, and mountainsides, as it were), our eyes set on each child and their parents as their lives spool out before us. Delpero’s direction allows the viewer to, in simple terms, get to know these characters as though our paths are crossing with theirs, her naturalistic style serving the film as opposed to making it feel like a distant, overhead portrait. 

As such, we innately come to understand that Ada (Rachele Potrich), the middle sister, is in the throes of a crisis of faith, particularly as it relates to her sexual desires. When she is first on screen, we only see her bottom half, the view of her torso obstructed by a wardrobe door she hides behind in order to masturbate. This, it becomes increasingly clear, is a habit of Ada’s, yet one she feels so discomfited by that she punishes herself each time she gives in to the urge. (At one point, she tells God that if she goes behind the wardrobe again, she will lay in chicken poop; if it happens again after that, she promises to eat shit, literally.) Her behaviors are in stark contrast to her younger sister, Flavia (Anna Thaler), the prized academic mind of the family. Cesare plans to send her away to boarding school – only one child can go due to the family’s financial constraints – despite her feeling hesitant about such a big step in secret. Flavia also spends a great deal of time hiding beneath a desk in her father’s office, noticing that he repeatedly accesses drawers where he has hidden photos of scantily clad women, none of whom are his wife.

The three youngest boys, Pietrin, Tarcisio, and Giacinto (Enrico Panizza, Luis Thaler, and Simone Benedetti, respectively), are all too young to have made an education-related impression yet, though Pietrin certainly has an inquisitive mind, showcased by his incessant questions and longing for bedtime stories, if nothing else. The eldest male, Dino (Patrick Gardner), is a disappointment to his father, a teenager on the cusp of manhood who wants to be served wine at dinner more than he wants anything real out of life. Every single one of these details, penned by Delpero with intention as opposed to merely broadening her film’s scope for the sake of it, is impressive in how consequential they are in terms of furthering each character’s individual arc. Ada’s friendship with Virginia (Carlotta Gamba), a girl from town, blossoms as she becomes more conflicted with both her sexuality and the faith-based issues that arise because of it; Pietrin’s fascination with Pietro – due to the similarity between their names – leads to the family warming to his presence, it having been seen as a potential nuisance when he mysteriously accompanied Attilio (Santiago Fondevila Sancet), Cesare’s nephew, back to Vermiglio after leaving the trenches behind.

That comfort allows for a relationship between Lucia, the film’s main character insofar that it has one, and Pietro to form, and for the broader complications in its events to appear. One might feel that the nature of Pietro’s mystique is too unfounded, even underexplored, for his fate to deliver such a blow to Lucia and her family, but if Pietro’s every move landed like a sucker punch, it would feel out of place in a film as instinctive as Delpero’s. Of course, we’re being vague so as not to spoil Vermiglio’s most “shocking” developments, but it’s fair to say that something is off about Pietro from the moment he appears on screen. The feeling never goes away, especially when Pietro departs for Sicily to see his family late in the film, but it remains ever-possible that this doom-and-gloom feeling could feasibly be a red herring or lead to a pivotal climax; the ambiguity that Delpero maintains is the sign of a director in complete control of her material.

Such command isn’t always matched by a film’s lead, but Martina Scrinzi’s emotional range more than meets the mark Delpero sets for her character. Lucia holds Vermiglio’s most prominent narrative position, her gaze consistently being a principal focus for Mikhail Krichman’s camera, and her own story mirroring the family’s as a whole: A long history of boys who age into men and girls who become women, yet never say grow out of the home where their entire childhood took place. Perhaps Vermiglio, somewhat inspired by Delpero’s own family history, is an exorcism for a director who feels similarly about that past. If it’s simpler than that, it’s still rather breathtaking.

Vermiglio will debut in theaters on December 25, 2024, courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films.