TOM's Film Club: Happy as Lazarro (12A)

Winner of Best Screenplay at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Italian writer-director Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro is a beguiling and luminous magic-realist fable which echoes the surrealist films of cinematic masters like Pier Paolo Pasolini, Federico Fellini and Derek Jarman.

Beautifully shot on super 16mm, the film follows the sweet-natured peasant Lazzaro (played wonderfully by newcomer Adriano Tardiolo) whose people-pleasing personality is often mistaken for simple-mindedness. Lazzaro is persuaded by the village ruler’s bleach blonde son to help him fake his own kidnapping for ransom; however, their plans take some unexpected and miraculous turns.

“Happy As Lazzaro... is a weightless enigma, an unfathomable promise of happiness, gently tugging you upward, like a balloon on the end of a string” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian