Review: ‘Primavera’
2025 / Dir. Damiano Michieletto
☆ 4/5
Watch if you like: Portrait of a Lady on Fire, BBC costume dramas, your time in high school orchestra, and hating slovenly aristocrats with goofy hair and bad makeup who mistreat women.
Tecla Insolia is riveting as Cecilia, an orphan girl in early 1800s Venice, whose path in life is to either get sold off to a nobleman or hope beyond hope that her unknown mother may come back to claim her. That is until she becomes the star pupil of Antonio Vivaldi (Michele Riondino), a poor and sickly composer returning to teach at the real-life orphanage after failing to find success at court. The film resembles a Baroque painting, with incredible costuming, stunning sets, and a play between darkness and candlelight, set to a gorgeous score shifting between Vivaldi and original compositions from composer Fabio Massimo Capogrosso. Fortunately, in resisting becoming a kind of “Dead Vivaldi’s Society”, Primavera subverts most Hollywood-style tropes and isn’t afraid to depict the harshness of life for a young woman like Cecilia, who has been forced into a life that’s genuinely just a meat market for old, lecherous, and wealthy men. Even in darkness, the power of art and music can still shine a light.