Italian drama "The Wonders" opens on Aug. 22 and it's well worth a look (or two or three).
This Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix award winner (released in Italy as "Le Meraviglie") is simply a stunning work of art — visually splendid and a razor-sharp commentary on contemporary society.
Directed by Alice Rohrwacher, "The Wonders" follows the lives of a beekeeping family in the idyllic Tuscan countryside during one summer. It's not clear how French mother Angelica (Alba Rohrwacher) met and married her rigidly stubborn German husband Wolfgang (Sam Louwyck), but now they have four daughters and their lives are all about raising bees and making honey.
That's nowhere as sweet as it sounds — their work is mind-bogglingly hard and the bulk of it is carried out by 12-year-old Gelsomina (Maria Alexandra Lungu) and Wolfgang.
Living in a rundown farmhouse with no digital devices or even a TV, the family leads a pretty isolated existence until a reality TV show descends on the village, intent on showing how uncorrupted and idealistic farm life is, in a bid to draw more tourists to the area.
As Gelsomina's coming of age story, "The Wonders" is extraordinary, but the film also reveals how — even in golden Tuscany — agri- business and government-mandated pesticides are altering the terrain and destroying a way of life.
The alternative, however, is for men like Wolfgang to carry on a tradition that's vanishing from every corner of the globe, even if it means treating his children like slaves and alienating his wife.
Honey will never taste the same.