Happy as Lazzaro

Happy as Lazzaro comes and goes like an airy fable but doesnt 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

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 rebelliou...

Adriano Tardiolo is really good in this biblically apt story of the young Lazzaro. Hes 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 mans 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 ...