The Tale of King Crab (Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, 2021) (Patreon)

First it must be acknowledged that this is one of the best-looking films in quite awhile. While Simone D'Arcangelo's cinematography for King Crab maintains a consistent texture, it is also attuned to the slightest differences in light and shadow, lending the images the palpable quality one finds in Old Master painting. This approach does a lot of the heavy lifting for the directors, since part of King Crab's aesthetic mission is to render contemporary views of Italy and Argentina as if they were centuries old, without many of the typical period-piece trappings. 

Having said that, I'm fairly ambivalent about King Crab. It begins as if it is going to be triangulated through the old Italian peasants sitting around the barroom table, a folktale recalled across time and maintaining a certain emotional sway over these men of the present. This frame is abandoned almost immediately, as if de Righi and Zoppis mean to point out just how much they owe to Pasolini and then "go beyond" that influence.

The film is divided in two parts. The first part, "The Misdeed of the Doctor's Son,"  is primarily the tale of Luciano (Gabrielle Silli), the son of a doctor (Bruno di Giovanni) and a drunken troublemaker. He is despised by the villagers, partly because his defiance towards the local prince (played by noted Italian painter Enzo Cucchi) stands to cause them direct harm. But mostly Luciano is resented because he comes from a social and economic station most of them will never achieve and allowed himself to fall so low. He intends to court a farmer's daughter, Emma (Maria Alexandra Lungu), but her father  Severino (Severino Sperandio) won't have it. When he fobs the girl off to the prince as a plaything, Luciano explodes.

In the second part, "The Asshole of the World," Luciano reappears in the guise of Don Antonio, an Argentine priest. He is captured by a band of three robbers because they want him to lead them to a hidden fortune in gold. Where the first part basked in the loping tone of The Canterbury Tales or The Decameron, the back half becomes a Latin version of a Spaghetti Western, with double-crosses, gunfights, and the slow navigation of an unforgiving landscape. (It is here, by the way, that the crab makes its appearance.)

There is nothing in particular wrong with The Tale of King Crab. But apart from its pristine lensing, there's not a great deal on offer. Its lackluster structure and genre-tweaking mostly reminded me of other, better films. Since this is only their second film, de Righi and Zoppis's overall aesthetic is still very much under development. But aside from the obvious nods to Pasolini, King Crab struck me as as a middling entry in the burgeoning neo-pastoralism that seems to be dominating Italian art cinema, best exemplified by Pietro Marcello and Alice Rohrwacher. The Argentinean section, meanwhile, plays like a dull riff on Lisandro Alonso's Jauja and especially Lucrecia Martel's Zama. Clearly de Righi and Zoppis have seen all the same movies we have, but good taste isn't always enough.