After those early throes of forbidden romance, De Righi and Zoppis lead their story to a tragedy-then, out of nowhere, a shift to the southernmost point of Argentina and a different story, one of gold and those quixotic folk who try to find it.
It may not be a coincidence that the source of Luciano’s affections, named Emma, is played by Maria Alexandra Lungu, an actress who hasn’t graced a cinema screen since her debut, at age 14, in The Wonders Alice Rohrwacher’s aesthetic sensibilities can be seen all over. (Even the prince’s goons, who appear like Tweedledum and Tweedledee wrapped in bandoliers, manage to express a sense of menace to go with their absurdity.) But Silli remains the standout, and it’s through his sincerity that King Crab finds anchor as it wades alluringly toward magical realism. De Righi and Zoppis draw unanimously fine performances from a cast whose amateurish qualities only add to their film’s bucolic charms. He quickly draws the attention of the prince (Enzo Cucchi) and his thugs, first by pesky infrastructure (Luciano is incensed that the prince’s gateway will block a traditional procession through the village), and only then due to love. Having returned to his hometown, Luciano spends the opening propping up a table at the local boozer where he shares a telling camaraderie with the regulars. The character is endlessly compelling: tall and brooding with a rumbling baritone described at various points as a “drunk” and an “aristocrat,” among other things and a man whose wild, unkempt beard (the actor apparently didn’t shave for two years for the role) can only intermittently disguise a certain charming kindness in the eyes. The storyteller introduces us to Luciano, the vagabond, played wonderfully by Gabriele Silli in his first screen role. That’s because, in a sense, it is a folktale, evidenced by De Righi and Zoppis’ non-fiction prologue wherein some old hunters sit around a table in the present day, drinking and exchanging songs and stories, eventually landing on the eponymous legend. Small traces of both Black Beast (their 2013 short about a legendary animal) and Il Sonengo (their 2018 feature documentary about a lone hermit) can be located in Crab, a film with all the texture of a folktale-one passed through generations, the facts blurring and embellishments only growing more ethereal with each retelling. With that kind of spatial and temporal scope, it’s remarkable that Crab is only the first narrative feature from Italian filmmakers Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, a duo whose output, while ostensibly non-fiction to this point, has often played on the boundary of fable. (Tough luck.) Later on, astonishingly, he finds himself on the other side of the world.
A rare and elusive sense of myth is captured in The Tale of King Crab, a story of a 19th-century vagabond who falls in love with the daughter of a local farmer only to run afoul of a prince.
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