Le Quattro Volte (2010, G)

(The Four Times) Dir: Michelangelo Frammartino, Italy, 88mins, digital

Exclusive Canberra season 3 – 26 March

How to describe the plot of the new film by Italian director Michelangelo Frammartino?... A weary old village goat herder keeps himself alive with a medicine concocted from the ash of village churches’ altar candles… A fragile baby goat is born, but one winter’s day falls behind the herd… Spring comes, and local villagers gather to cut a tall pine tree down, making the centre-piece of their summer festival… Then it’s Autumn, and the local charcoal-makers arrive to take the tree trunk away… The words ‘magic realist’ comes to mind; except everything in the film seems quotient, commonplace, and often quietly comic. Instead, the magic courses through an illusive but beautifully potent connection between La Quattro Volte’s central characters – only some of whom are human. And it’s also implicit in the endless cycles of life, death and renewal, the cosmic balance between seasonal transformation and continuity which govern the Calabrian village around which the film is set.

A major winner at the 2010 Cannes Director’s Fortnight section (including – really – a special ‘Palme Dog’ award given by the jury to the goat-herding dog, Vuk) La Quattro Volte was acclaimed by many as one the best films at the festival in any section in 2010.

“The best film I’ve ever seen about goats. In short, a maaaa-sterpiece.”
— Jonathan Romney, The Independent

“'Quite simply the strangest – and one of the most entertaining – films you will see…”
— Nick Roddick, The Evening Standard

“An almost wordless film of striking beauty and originality, Le Quattro Volte announces the confident arrival of the second Michelangelo of Italian cinema.”
— Lee Marshall, Screen International