The trailer for Alice Rohrwacher’s Le Meraviglie has been released. The film will premiere at Cannes and is in competition for the Palme d’Or. Only one other film directed by a woman will be showcased in the main competition, Naomi Kawase’s Still the Water.
Filmmaker Magazine reports that Le Meraviglie, which translates into The Wonders, is “set in the Umbrian countryside” and “centers on the eldest daughter of a provincial bee-keeping family whose summer is upended by the arrival of a young German boy and local television competition headed by none other than Monica Bellucci.”
The trailer offers us glimpses of the quiet Umbrian countryside, the family’s domestic life and bee-keeping duties, and the arrival of the television crew that stirs everything up. The trailer doesn’t have subtitles, but it’s very atmospheric and we get a pretty clear sense from the visuals — combined with the plot summary — that Le Meraviglie is a female coming of age story.
Rohrwacher, who both directed and wrote the film, has previously depicted girls on the brink of change. Her 2011 offering Corpo Celeste — Heavenly Body — chronicled a thirteen year old’s move back to Southern Italy with her mother and sister who is tries to figure out her place in this new environment, and in the wider world.
Le Meraviglie will premiere at Cannes then open in Italy on May 22.
