Starring: Swamy Rotolo, Claudio Rotolo, Carmela Fumo, Grecian Rotolo, other members of the Rotolo family.
Distributor: Palace Films
Runtime: 122 mins. Reviewed in May 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This Italian film tells the story of a 15-year-old teenage girl who is traumatised by her father’s disappearance. Her family falls apart after her father abandons it, and she has to forge a new identity to cope with what has happened.
This subtitled Italian drama is the third movie in a trilogy directed by Carpignano. The three movies are set in the town of Gioia Tauro in Calabria, southern Italy. The figurative meaning of the Italian ‘chiara’ is ‘luminous, (and) clear’, and the name additionally references devotion to Santa Chiara – anglicised as St Clare, who was a follower of Saint Francis of Assisi. The trilogy began with the film, Mediterranea in 2015.
Gioia Tauro is an Italian drug-trafficking town run by the ‘Ndrangheta’, which is a secretive mafia clan in Italy. Resident in the town are various members of the Gueerasio family, and the movie is a sequel to Carpigano’s 2017 film, A Ciambra. The movie won the Best European Film in the Cannes Film Festival of 2021. Six members of the same family (the Rotolo family) play key characters, and the acting by the same family on screen gives tremendous authenticity to the film.
In the film, members of Gueerasio family come together to celebrate the 18th birthday of Giulia (Grecia Rotolo), despite a friendly rivalry between Giulia, and her 25-year-old sister, Chiara (Swamy Rotolo). Chiara is the key character in the film and titles it. During the night, a car parked outside the family house explodes, and Chiara sees her father, Claudio – who is much loved by her – running down the road away from the burning vehicle. Neither Chiara’s mother, nor her elder sister, tell Chiara where, or why, her father fled. The next day, her father is still gone, and media reports communicate that Claudio is now wanted by the law. Anxiety sweeps over the family, which appeared to Chiara to be closely knit. Unconvinced by what her family says, Chiara conducts her own exploration, and she finds passage-ways in the family house which supply secret routes of connection for use by different members of her extended family, her father in particular. Chiara faces the fact that her family is linked to the criminal underworld, and that the mafia is heavily involved in what her family is doing. She is stunned.
Afterwards, a social worker picks Chiara up at school to take her to foster care. The authorities appear to be saying that Chiara’s family is too problematic for her. Faced with multiple crises, Chiara has to work out what kind of future she has, what she wants for herself, and how she should confront her father for what she thinks he is. The film’s essential message is one of personal growth. As Chiara emotionally comes to grip with the nature of her extended family, she feels pressure to change the relationship she had previously formed with her beloved father.
The acting of Swamy Rotolo, as Chiara, is excellent. She projects a fierce, intense commitment to the character of Chiara, and plays a teenage girl trapped by family conflicts and caught between rebelliousness, affection for family, and a desire for positive action. She engenders insights required for viewers to perceive genuine change in the difficult path Chiara chooses for redemption. The film becomes darker as its plot-line develops. The film is well-supported by a compelling, almost threatening, musical score, and staccato-camera work highlights the dramatic tension. The film is unquestionably Chiara’s story, and Swamy Rotolo gives it her all.
The carefully directed poignancy of family moments give this film a special quality. Chiara is fighting to find a place in a masculine, criminally-inclined world. The movie is essentially about family and filial commitment, and not about criminal happenings. Chiara struggles to form a mature identity that encompasses a sense of belonging to a family that is hers. This is a film about coming-of-age change, following a dramatic loss of innocence. Chiara triumphs, and the film is helped enormously by the naturalistic acting of a true-to-life-family unit, performing together.
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