03/09/2024 - VENICE 2024: The poetic feature by the Italian directing duo of Martina Parenti and Massimo D’Anolfi transports us into the heart of things, where the human eye hardly ever lingers

Bestiaries, Herbaria, Lapidaries [+see also:
trailer
interview: Martina Parenti and Massimo…
film profile], the mysterious latest film by Martina Parenti and Massimo D’Anolfi, presented Out of Competition at the Venice Film Festival, pays homage to the unknown that surrounds us and that, incessantly, contributes to our life without us noticing. Divided in three parts that take up the evocative words of the title, the film focuses respectively on the animal, vegetal and mineral worlds. Loyal to a very personal cinematic world since their first feature, the two Italian directors give life to an essay film, as they themselves define it, that weaves together scientific considerations, reflections on cinema and the poetry of reality. The result is an intriguing film that manages to touch, in an at once delicate and unexpected way, the most sensitive cords of our being.

Divided into three independent acts, Bestiaries, Herbaria, Lapidaries is nevertheless clearly one and the same film. The twilight and meditative atmosphere, amplified by Massimo Mariani’s music, that pervades every act, makes it so that the different parts unite and dialogue in a poetic way, despite addressing different themes. Moreover, whether the characters are animals, plants or minerals, what the film as a whole communicates is the necessity of investigating other worlds, of going further away from the anthropocene to discover what truly surrounds us and allows us to carry on with our little existences.

Opening the dance are the animals, or rather the animals as represented in cinema. Titled “Cinema invents new cages”, the first act of the film concentrates, in the found-footage format, on the relationship between man and animals as cinema, from its beginnings, has staged it. What emerges is then a kind of story, still to be built, of the human gaze on the animal, of its need to impose its dominance. Whether it be through the camera or the rifle, men have always regarded their prey as trophies, proof of their virile power and of their supposed intellectual superiority. To accompany the precious archival images commented by researchers who take care of them, we also find touching images of animals helpless in the hands of their vets.

The second act, dedicated this time to the plant world, takes place inside the huge greenhouses and in the archives of the Padova botanical garden, the oldest in the world, as stated in the film. Found footage makes way for observational documentary accompanied by scientific-philosophical considerations about plants that remind us how much, albeit discreetly, almost imperceptibly, they contribute to our life on earth. Statements such as “it is impossible to eliminate nature from the planet because plants are much stronger than us. What instead risks getting eliminated is the human being, undoubtedly less able to adapt itself to extreme situations” finally put plants centre stage, highlighting the irrelevance of our lives as human beings, dominating but terribly fragile. Fragile like the young man, passionate about botany, who died during the Second World War and who offered the archive a touching “war herbarium”. The film concludes with a reflection on the transformation of the stone in the collective memory through the creation of little commemorative plates with the names of the innumerable people deported during the Second World War.

Questioning our representation of reality and inverting power relationships, Bestiaries, Herbaria, Lapidaries creates a constructive and poetic dialogue between all beings on this planet.

Bestiaries, Herbaria, Lapidaries was produced by Montmorency Film with Rai Cinema, Lomotion, SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen / SRG SSR. Fandango handles international sales.

(Translated from Italian)