A little encouragement can go a long way in “Sacred Creatures,” a strange and endearing rumination on faith that has mysterious charm similar to its lead Miriam (Olivia Luccardi), though it takes a bit of time for both to find their footing. For Miriam, who has come from abroad to the Italian countryside where her brother Ray (Jamie Cusati-Moyer) is working as an artist’s assistant for a sculptor named Renzo (Antonio de Matteo), the excursion isn’t exactly some leisurely getaway. She is tentative to speak for reasons that are mired in secrecy and at dinner with their sister Michelle (Romina D’Ugo), Ray is reluctant to pour her wine, though the bottle is eventually emptied out by the end of the night. It’s never suggested there was a time when she wasn’t at least a little strange, but this seems alarmingly so, leading Michelle to buy a dress that she sees her sister eyeing against her better judgment and fashion sense, an ostentatious chartreuse number that would seem to invite embarrassment if it were actually ever worn in public.
However, the opposite occurs in Frieda Luk’s feature debut, drawing strength on the power of a typically magnetic performance from Luccardi, the scene stealer from “The Baltimorans” and “Soft and Quiet” who wears the dress with confidence and captivates others with how certain of herself she is when all evidence would point otherwise. In a world where the power of personality seems to hold more value than ever, the curious comedy observes Miriam casting a spell over the residents of a remote Italian village as they can’t seem to look away from her dress nor resist her reading from a book she picked up from the local library, which may have been from a century prior but reads like a self-help manual in the present. Whereas Ray and Michelle were worried that they wouldn’t be able to pull Miriam out of her shell, they have the opposite problem when it’s hinted that a similar situation may have developed at the last place Miriam resided and they need to limit Miriam’s sphere of influence before it gets out of control.
Luk walks a fine line with the film’s unsettling tone, keeping Miriam’s past in the abstract and choosing transitions where scenes fade into another can make the film feel as if you’re falling down a rabbit hole with no bottom, though at times the decisions not to put too fine a point on things either with details or sharp cuts can leave a sense of being frustratingly amorphous. The film is at its best when there are direct confrontations as the writer/director has set up quite a few juicy subplots that gradually emerge when a reckoning is inevitable, but Michelle and Ray don’t want to deter Miriam from regaining her self-esteem and not only is there debate about how much they should rein things in, Miriam has a closer relationship to Ray than Michelle, who appears to have been ready to give up on her after her last escapade, complicating how to handle their sister. The setting inside Renzo’s villa where there are nightly parties drawing creative types from all around the region is also savvy when there already is a collective energy seemingly ready to be seized and Miriam isn’t seen as out of ordinary amongst the Bohemian artists, with no one raising an eyebrow when she pulls out a copy of Fiorella Valletti’s “Will Speaks Wisdom” to read a passage.
Luccardi, who has long had the unusual combination of looking as if she has a wisdom beyond her years at the same time that she can appear to be a mischievous child inhabiting an adult body, is exceptionally convincing as someone who can never be entirely pinned down as Miriam, and what can’t be known about her allows one to see what the townsfolk do as they choose to be intrigued rather than skeptical. Luk wisely refrains from suggesting too strongly that Miriam is really onto something as the character starts insisting on reaching another plane of existence, but “Sacred Creatures” as a whole is nonetheless capable of transporting audiences somewhere else.
“Sacred Creatures” will screen again at the Edinburgh Film Fest on August 17th at 2:45 pm at Cineworld Screen 4, August 18th at 4:30 pm at the Cameo Screen 2 and 7:15 pm at Cineworld Screen 3.