Small Body (2022)

At the start of the 20th century, the young "Agata" (Celeste Cescutti) has a difficult pregnancy that results in the birth of a child that doesn't survive long enough to be baptised. She'd distraught. Not just that she has lost her daughter, but that her child has lost it's chance of eternal peace in Heaven. Then she hears of a remote church far to the north where it is rumoured that they can resurrect the dead for just long enough to perform the ceremony. With her baby in a box and the clothes on her back, she sets off alone and ill provisioned for the trek. Along the way she encounters "Lynx" (Ondina Quadri) who offers to guide her but who is really just part of a lawless band of bandits who decide she'd be useful as a wet nurse! Luckily, they too are set upon and both are freed to continue their journey as the winter closes in and conditions become physically and psychologically desperate. Needless to say, there's not a great deal of trust between these two women but to survive they need to co-operate and maybe there's a chance of salvation for everyone. This is quite a touching story of superstition, certainly, but it also demonstrates the lengths to which a mother will go for her child - even when it lives no more. Cescutti works well delivering that determined and vulnerable role and both her and Quadri take this simple story from auteur Laura Samani and imbue it with quite powerful characterisations. There's not a great deal of dialogue but what there is, partnered with Fredrika Stahl's score, offers us a quest of near biblical proportions that is well worth a watch.