Critic Reviews

You feel the weight of Chiara’s dilemma, the cost of the knowledge she demands, and the heroism of her willingness to pay it.

What’s best about A Chiara is its totality of naturalism and subjectivity — how it humanely complicates a teenager’s newfound self-possession, so that we admire her quest for clarity and reckoning about her family, while worrying how it will affect the decision she makes about her future.

He’s not quite deconstructing the gangster picture, but he succeeds in draining all its allure.

For all its social-realist tendencies, A Chiara is told in a wonderfully fluid and poetic fashion.

The film’s tone and the story structure are both naturalistic, and realistic. Carpignano doesn’t force huge moments of upheaval in the film, or story points where characters have sudden shifts of personality to heighten the drama or bring the story to a dramatic conclusion. We’re experiencing what Chiara experiences, and again that documentary feel works to keep the story intimate.

Wrapping up his stories is never Carpignano’s strong point and at two full hours, this one could have used greater economy. But the slow-burn power of the drama is formidable and there are moments of separation that pack searing poignancy.

Carpignano once again uses a tight, intimate character focus to take a wider look at larger political and cultural issues in this region. In the poetically, humanistically crafted A Chiara, he also manages to flip the Mafia movie on its head, and in doing so, challenges the mythology that keeps these shadowy systems in power.

A Chiara is a movie one not only enjoys watching unfold, but sitting with, mulling over, and discussing with friends in the days that follow. Viewers would do well not to let it pass them by.

A Chiara is arguably Carpignano’s most accomplished work to date, pressing ever further into the interior psychologies of his characters.

As Chiara, Rotolo’s face dominates the screen in closeup for much of the film, and she manages to look very young and yet very worldly wise at the same time. Another very impressive achievement from Carpignano.