Vermiglio, a new film by Italian director Maura Delpero, takes place in the village of the title, located in the Italian Alps near the Swiss border. The time is the winter of 1944, the last year of the Second World War in Italy. We meet a large family scraping out a living in this harsh environment. The father, played by Tomasso Ragno, is the village schoolteacher, with his own children among the students, offering basic literacy and other primary school subjects. With his imposing white-haired countenance, he’s a beloved and well-respected man, yet sometimes very strict. His hardworking wife, played by Roberta Rovelli, is the mother of eight children, with more on the way. Delpero has based these characters on her grandparents. The film’s realistic depiction of the rural Catholic patriarchal family and society of that time, suffused with the beauty of the Italian Alpine countryside, allows us into that world and its suffering, especially that of the women. Without family planning or birth control, the mother’s married life has been one pregnancy after another.
In the opening scene, an aunt is talking about a visitor to the village, a Sicilian soldier named Pietro who saved her son’s life, carrying him on his back to safety, after which they both deserted the army and fled north to Vermiglio. Being a deserter is considered shameful, but with the Germans taking over in Italy after the Italian army was defeated by the Allies, it seems acceptable to them. No one wants to be a slave of the Germans.
This stranger, whose Sicilian dialect is hard for these northern people to understand, gradually gains the trust of the family by his sharing of their hard work. He stays in a hut in the forest rather than in the family house, not wanting to impose himself on them. But the oldest daughter, Lucia, played by Martina Scrinzi, is immediately smitten with him. Their awkward courtship, in which neither really knows what to say, plays out against the drama of the other family members, especially the two other daughters.
The hyper-religious Ada (Rachele Potrich), frightened by the supposed sinfulness of masturbating, devises various punishments she must endure if she sins again, like sleeping in the chicken coop. The youngest daughter, Flavia, is the best at school and is singled out by her father as the only child to be sent away for further education. This will be expensive, so there can be only one who goes. In one scene, the father, who plays records of Schubert and Vivaldi on his phonograph, tangles with his wife when he orders a new record. We’re having trouble affording to feed the children, she says. He says he needs it for his teaching, and he gets the record.
There are several other parallel stories concerning different family members. Delpero presents them all to us in a quiet, measured style, sensitive to each person’s distinctive quirks. The cinematography by Mikhail Krichman paints with deep blues, greens, and grays to convey the quiet majesty of the setting. But the emphasis is on hardship—the rural poor living a tough life of scarcity.
The story ends up centering on Lucia, and the unforeseen consequences of her love. The women in this time and place are trapped in a system where agency is condemned and people believe that a woman can be “ruined” by her free choices. Yet Lucia fights in her own way for dignity. Vermiglio reveals strength in the eyes even of the most powerless.
