Oh yeah, I saw these a few weeks ago, and meant to write them up, and should do so now before I forget.

So, The Wonders is by Alice Rohrwacher, who made Happy as Lazzaro. That movie started off in a kind of timeless Italian countryside and then took some really surprising twists. This earlier movie of hers starts in a timeless Italian countryside, and mostly doesn’t have those twists.

It’s about a family of beekeepers; they’re poor and rural, and there’s a bit of a sense that the passage of time is making their lifestyle less possible, with things like “sanitation standards” and the like. The movie follows them — in particular, the oldest daughter — over a period of time where they take in a foster kid and enter into a reality show (which is trying to find “The Countryside Wonders,” producers making traditional Italian foods in the old ways, as a kind of tourist thing). It’s well-made and enjoyable and maybe just a little too obvious in its themes and story beats.

Viva is by Anna Biller, who also made The Love Witch. Like that, this is a hypersaturated hyper-stylized movie with hyper-mannered acting; it’s just pervaded through with her style. Also like The Love Witch, it’s taking a feminist angle on a kind of ’70s sexploitation film. But this is definitely an earlier film from her career, because it’s working in broader strokes with less subtlety. It’s a fascinating movie stylistically, but if it were made with a more conventional aesthetic, it’s a little thin.

So I think my takeaway in both cases is that Biller and Rohrwacher are both talented film-makers, and these earlier films of theirs are, in fact, really good and built their reputations deservedly; but that they’ve both gotten better as they’ve gotten more experience, which is the way you’d want that to go, all things considered.