The Mohican, one of ten films selected to compete in the Orizzonte Extra programme at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, examines just how far one man will go to preserve a way of life that is all but extinct. Inspired by his documentary work on one of the last coastal shepherds of Corsica, director Frédéric Farrucci (Via di Vita: In Terra Pasturale) has crafted an engaging modern western about the inevitable encroachment of capitalism into the quietest corners of the world and the unlikely heroes waging war against it.
Casting his eye away from Corsica’s glamorous beach resorts, Farrucci focuses his attention inward, on the lives of the island’s increasingly displaced local inhabitants. The unlikely heart of the story beats in the chest of an unassuming man by the name of Joseph Cardelli (an eminently watchable Alexis Manenti), one of the last traditional coastal goatherds in the region. Wishing for little more than to be left in peace to live and work in the manner of the generations that preceded him, Joseph has been fending off local mafiosos who have their eye on his land, which is ripe for lucrative resort development. Unlike his neighbours, who have opted to sell, securing themselves comfortable financial futures at the expense of the traditional Corsican way of life, Joseph has held fast, and in the process placed a target on his back.
Luckily, his beloved niece Vanni (Mara Taquin) unexpectedly arrives from Paris with her friend Lou (Luiza Benaïssa), providing a warm and welcome distraction from his woes. Vanni clearly feels a deep connection to the land despite living her most of her life away, but that evening, the girls find themselves confronted with the violent politics of the island. As they relax enjoying a few drinks at a local bar, a friend of Vanni’s butts heads with a group of local men determined to disrupt the development of the coast by any means necessary. Tensions among the locals run deep, with some leaning into the development, forsaking the preservation of the island’s cultural heritage, and others vehemently resisting, sabotaging construction sites and enacting other forms of violent resistance. Vanni, an idealist, bristles at her friend’s laissez-faire attitude but finds herself called out for being little better than a tourist, free to go back to her Parisian home any time she likes.
The next day, Joseph receives a threatening visit from the local Mafia. Predictably, things go awry, and Joseph accidentally kills one of their low-level representatives, kicking off an island wide manhunt as he goes on the run, becoming an unlikely folk hero in the process. Updating the tropes of the western genre for the modern age, Farrucci stages the action on two fronts: Joseph’s frantic journey across the rolling hills of the island, and Vanni’s battle on social media. Determined to use all the tools at her disposal to fight the prevailing mainstream media narrative against him, Vanni recruits massive public support for her uncle’s plight as he evades capture by both the police (evidently in the mafia’s pocket) and the mafia itself. Having captured the public imagination (#lemohican spreads like wildfire, much to the chagrin of the local Mafia boss), the island’s inhabitants take it upon themselves to protect him from both the cops and the gangsters hot on his tail until his fate inevitably catches up to him.
Benefiting from his familiarity with the region, Farrucci has done a wonderful job of sketching out the local culture, giving the audience a rare look at this lovely small corner of the world, creating both a valuable historical document and amplifying our feeling of impending grief for a place most of us don’t really know at all. Sadly, despite the public support for Joseph’s cause, there is something quixotic in his plight, and (just as in reality) his fight against the capitalist forces massed against him seems inevitably to be headed for failure. In spite of this, the film ends on an ambiguous note of defiance and hope, with Vanni holding fast to her mission, even as Joseph’s (and the island’s) ultimate fate remains unknown.
The Mohican premieres in the Orizzonte Extra programme at the 81st Venice International Film Festival.
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