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Le Quattro Volte (2010)

Director: Michelangelo Frammartino

Time Out rating

Average user rating

13 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

What a pleasure to welcome a true original. Here’s a wonderful film about life, the universe and everything. It’s captivating, touching, wryly humorous, mysterious, intriguing and uplifting. It’s set in rural Calabria in the depths of Italy, there’s no dialogue, and it stars an old man, the world’s cleverest collie, lots of goats, a tree and… a pile of charcoal. True, this sounds suspiciously like a piss-take on arthouse pretentiousness, but you’ll just have to trust us: the charcoal really is key.

Not that this is immediately apparent from the get-go, since writer-director Frammartino only gradually unfurls his secrets. It starts with peasants enigmatically bashing a huge smouldering pile of ash, the thump-thump laid over the plain white-on-black title card like a heartbeat. ‘Le Quattro Volte’ translates as ‘The Four Times’, maybe even ‘The Four Turns’, so we’re left to ponder on that. Cut to an elderly goatherd who spends his time with his flock up on the hills, is clearly not in the best of health, and is treating himself with a solution of what turns out to be dust swept from the floor of the local church. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust then? Certainly, the film’s not short on images of regeneration and renewal, as the small hilltop community’s Easter festival brings the cast of a Passion Play, we see a baby goat coming into this world and taking its first hesitant steps… and then there’s the tree, and the charcoal, of course…

Where exactly is all this going? Well, there’s not a conventional narrative as such, but the ‘Four Turns’ allusion does make sense as the focus moves from man to animal to vegetable to mineral, the different elements combining to make the totality of the movie – just as they make the totality of everything else in this world, Frammartino seems to be reminding us.

Explaining it makes it sound aridly abstract, but watching it is pure delight, since the camera captures baby animals at play, the aforementioned collie strutting its stuff in a mind-boggling extended set-piece, the passing clouds and a tree persevering through winter, all shot in a way which is jolly, entrancingly beautiful and utterly heart-rending (nature is harsh, after all) from moment to moment. Naturally, as a viewer, you try to impose an interpretation on everything, but that seems to be the very point, since images of the Easter story, and indeed a more ancient folk festival seen later in the film, seem to hint at mankind’s need for an overriding ‘story’ explaining our place in the universe.

It’s meditative and thought-provoking, all right, yet hardly a difficult film, even if it’s not quite like anything else you’ve ever seen. For some there’ll be reminders of Kiarostami, or Gideon Koppel’s lovely ‘Sleep Furiously’, perhaps even Bresson’s ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’, but no prior cinephile knowledge is required to get the most out of this beguiling and unique piece of cinema. Just an open mind. And an open heart.

Author: Trevor Johnston

Time Out London Issue 2127: May 26 – June 3, 2011

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User reviews of this film

Michael Dampier said...

Posted on Dec 27 2011 12:59 This is a film about nature which begs more existential questions. The images and sounds work together to guide you through cycles of life. With it's lack of drama the film focuses on what would ordinarily be just background. Beauty and chaos. Wonderful film, about as natural an experience you will have in the cinema.

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DisgustedofTunridgeWells said...

Posted on Sep 01 2011 17:39 I knew there wouildn't be a plot, but this was very laborious. Lovely rustic village, scenery, goatherd, animals, but 30 mins would have done it justice. Suspect 5* revues suffering from 'Emporer's New Clothes' syndrome

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Unimpressed said...

Posted on Jul 25 2011 09:06 Seeing this movie was a huge waste of my not particularly precious time. Most of the people at the screening I was at, at least those who didn't leave before the end, felt cheated out of a movie, an evening out etc. I urge you to save yourself the ticket price and time by not going, or at least read lots of reviews before you go. It gets one star only because this website requires it.

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Jul 02 2011 23:46 Saw this film again today. It's perfect and as beautiful as full of life any film I've ever seen. The goat kid, the charcoal fire and the dog are the stars (though the dog does ham it up sometimes). Sublime.

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Jun 16 2011 17:28 I've just seen a comment on the Curzon site which says that the film follows the migration of the soul through four states - man, animal, vegetable, mineral. This was a conviction of Pythagoras, it seems. I didn't pick the thread up at all but can see the sequence of man, goat kid, tree but what was the mineral - oh!, the charcoal. Man, goat kid, felled tree, the charcoal. A life cycle of a soul, it seems.

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Dave said...

Posted on Jun 15 2011 05:52 I too think that I may have missed something about this film. I was not at all impressed by what was on the screen apart from the beautiful scenery and natural surroundings. To think I had a day off from work to go and see this film, I feel rather ripped off. With the amount of people that walked out of the screening after just 10 minutes and then at 10 minute intervals all the way through the film. To have funding and finances for a creative form I feel to be of precious value in this day and age. If I had been the funding body for this piece of work, then I would have been saddened by the final piece. I will give half a star for the dogs performance........certainly didn't rock my boat and not many around me either....................

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Wow, your post makes mine said...

Posted on Jun 01 2011 15:02 Wow, your post makes mine look felebe. More power to you!

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Jun 01 2011 01:01 An old man coughs, his dog barks at everyone and everything (the greatest dog in showbusiness, by the way, performing a magnificent one take sight gag), a tree is felled and climbed in a town festival, snails escape from a pan, a goat kid is lost in a grove. There's no dialogue. Lovely photography of diverse farm yards, town- and land- scapes. Not sure why I give it 4 rather than 5 stars but it's an appropriately self-confident film that doesn't need my patronage. Fine work. See and applaud it's rural rhythm and glamour.

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Ian said...

Posted on May 29 2011 22:54 Wonderful film. If you enjoyed the very good Sleep Furiously last year you will love this. Similar in tone, slow self-effacing observational and rich in detail. A lovely tinkling, subtle soundtrack, full of natural sound. Slow film making at its best, just allow yourself to bask in it. Goats will love this film, I hope they were at the cast and crew screening - and you will love them too.

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John Thomason said...

Posted on May 29 2011 05:49 Wonderful review -- very well said! This is sure to be in my top 10 of the year.

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julus said...

Posted on May 28 2011 18:17 You like goats ?? then you may like the film, otherwise its to subtile for me...

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dfsdsdfsd said...

Posted on May 26 2011 13:22 iiiofuiogu

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Angie said...

Posted on Apr 02 2011 01:39 I may have missed something - and if I did, so did several of the audience around me, given the reactions I heard when the movie ended. The cinematography was superb. Visually I was entranced, but I found its theme, our common link in and with nature, as developed in the film, was overly subtle and perhaps was intended to express Frammartino's view that it is all meaningless. Ultimately, it is humans who create meaning.

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