Vermiglio: A Tender Coming-of-Age Drama in a Remote Hamlet
In Vermiglio, a tiny commune tucked away in Italy’s Trentino province, she resides amid ice-bound peaks and snow-draped trees. The distant roar of World War II’s gunfire doesn’t reach this isolated hamlet; news trickles in slowly, often carried by foot-bound messengers. The quiet rhythm of life is stirred by the return of two deserters—not heroes, but fugitives: local boy Attilio (Santiago Fondevila) and Pietro, a stranger from Sicily (Giuseppe Di Domenico). In a village populated by drunken elders and weeping children—or perhaps weeping elders—the arrival of young men sparks more than moral debates; it kindles shy stirrings in eyes as cold and blue as the surrounding frost.
Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), the eldest daughter of the mustachioed schoolteacher Cesare (Tommaso Ragno), who often ponders duty’s prickly embrace, is the first to fall for the newcomer. Ada (Rachele Potrich), younger and more devout, seems to envy her sister or fear the curly-haired outsider. The youngest siblings, meanwhile, take to the illiterate but kind-hearted youth who carries them on his back through snowdrifts.
Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio is a pastoral tale—both achingly tender and unflinchingly stark—capturing life far from the frontlines, where war’s presence lingers in every glance and handshake. The film was born from a vision, a tactile memory Delpero couldn’t have lived: her late father, then a six-year-old, running barefoot through Vermiglio’s springtime. Rather than lean on personal nostalgia, Delpero crafts a vivid snapshot of an era, a family bound not by blood but by shared sorrow. It’s as if an old, heavy-framed photograph sprang to life, whispering of hidden griefs and quiet hopes.
Delpero steps back across generations, not to judge the rigid traditions of the time but to see the people caught in circumstance—social, climatic, and otherwise. Nature, captured in breathtaking shots by cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, is both mesmerizing and merciless. Its beauty, like thin mountain air, leaves you dizzy, while its cold numbs frozen fingers. A year passes, and as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons plays during a stern lesson, the war ends. Yet, the villagers know too well how long an echo lingers after a gunshot.
At its simplest, Vermiglio might feel like Alice Rohrwacher tackling Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, but without the everyday miracles that bloom in Rohrwacher’s work. Delpero doesn’t chase magic; she finds wonder in human connection—unspoken, lingering at the fingertips. Her non-verbal approach shapes both her method and the film’s drama. Words falter when the heart is heavy, then and now, but a heart drawn on paper, a note hidden in a bucket, or a feather brushed across a sister’s hand speaks volumes. In the film’s measured, almost frozen pace, faces stand out starkly. Delpero casts mostly non-professional locals from Vermiglio and nearby, who may not command the camera but know the wind’s bite and how to milk a cow for warm milk to feed the children.
In these mountains, where even the faithless sense a divine presence, tavern quips turn into ancestral wisdom. What if cowardice spared men from taking up arms? Vermiglio, in a collective act of grace, shelters its deserters, offering forgiveness. Delpero passes no judgment, instead letting the heartaches of her little women and little men—cast to the margins of a global catastrophe—rise to the surface.
