Big award-winner for writer/director Alice Rohrwacher (Cannes et al.) is fascinating, yet so stingy with info, also frustratingly opaque. At heart, it's a bread-and-butter girl’s coming-of-age story, tricked out by a Tuscany setting and the beekeeping farm where she and her family live & work. Eldest of four girls, Gelsomina is treated as an adult by her demanding, depressive father (Mom holds mostly to domestic tasks) and gets the brunt of his complaints as their artisan honey-making operation starts to break down physically, culturally & economically. Further complications arrive with a German boy, about her age, coming to work; and when a tv crew picks them as contestants for a program on ancient Etruscan traditions not quite lost to time. But in trying to add variety, Rohrwacher needlessly pushes her material, making the boy silent and the television contest a gaudy costumed variety show when the drama of simply keeping the farm alive and in seeing how the young girl handles herself would have been more than enough. And if Rohrwacher doesn’t trust her material, why should we? Still, many good things in here when the film focuses on family, land and labor.
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