Focus Expat Cinema: every Wednesday around 7PM foreign language films with English subtitles.

Maura Delpero’s striking pastoral drama chronicles the passage of time in a rural Italian mountain village as the Second World War nears its end, and the fate of a young woman after she falls for a handsome deserter who has taken refuge there.

It’s winter in a small Italian mountain village. The Second World War, which is in its final months, seems a world away. Only the presence of a few deserters offers up any signs of life outside this place, whose seasons and passage of time are marked by modest celebrations. It’s at one of these that Lucia and Pietro’s eyes meet. Fate appears to look kindly on their coupling. But with the war almost at a close, Pietro, who deserted his post, must return home to face whatever judgement awaits him.

Lucia and Pietro’s relationship forms the main thread of Maura Delpero’s quietly devastating drama. But the film is also a tapestry of the villagers’ life, in particular Lucia’s family, which is presided over by a stern patriarch – the local teacher – whose love of music would rather have him watch his family starve than deny himself a new recording of a favourite composition. And as he and the village’s menfolk congregate in the local inn, the women work to the bone to ensure their survival. Mikhail Krichman’s cinematography captures the atmosphere of this world without romanticising it, while Delpero successfully teases out a complex and ultimately heartbreaking portrait of rural life.