Filmmaker, artist, and animator Virgilio Villoresi’s first feature, Orfeo, made after years of directing short films, advertisements, and music videos, is a whimsical, finely crafted creation; a mélange of vintage techniques, its interweaving of countless literary and cinematic references forms a film that is inarguably a product of its director’s idiosyncratic interests. An adaptation of Dino Buzzati’s 1969 graphic novel Poema a fumetti, co-written by Villoresi and Alberto Fornari, Orfeo is a reworking of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in a highly stylized 1960s Milan and a labyrinthine underworld, and which consists of both stop-motion animation and live-action film. Despite the film’s somewhat overfamiliar story, Villoresi’s immaculate craftsmanship and the abundant visual flair he cultivates in each frame more than compensate for the minor narrative weakness.
Orfeo (Luca Vergoni) is a lounge pianist at the club Polypus. On a stage framed by Beaux Arts wrought-iron ornamentation, he plays tantalizing arpeggiated tunes for a stylish audience, seated at club tables behind silver candelabras. He makes a connection with a beautiful, mysterious audience member named Eura (Giulia Maenza), and they fall into a love affair that culminates in a romantic night spent at Orfeo’s picturesque mountainside cabin. Eura disappears soon after without any explanation, but when Orfeo sees her ghostly form passing through an unassuming door, he learns that, to reunite with Eura, he must pass through this spectral door himself. Orfeo then embarks on a journey through the afterlife, where time and space do not correspond to the rhythms of the surface world, and where he encounters magical beings that give him a series of strange tasks so that he might be able to find Eura again.
Orfeo is fundamentally a by-the-books retelling of the Orpheus myth, where the lover follows his beloved into the afterlife, reunites with her, and then loses her to death once again just as he returns to the world of the living. Villoresi, who also edited the film, treats the mythical, metaphysical romance seriously, but it’s always evident that what interests him the most are the opportunities for technical play and experimentation. “It became an opportunity,” Villoresi noted in his director’s statement for the film’s premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, “for me to blend languages cultivated over time — including artisanal animation, experimental cinema, and optical techniques — into a symbolic and sensorial tale.”
The live-action sequences are shot in a studio, where Orfeo and Eura move through intricately decorated scenery conceived of by production designers Riccardo Carelli and Federica Locatelli. In the Milan scenes, establishing shots and interstitial scenes are largely animated in charming and detailed stop-motion (animations are credited to Anna Ciammitti, Stefania Demicheli, and Umberto Chiodi), but the ambition and imagination of the animation come to full fruition once Orfeo descends into the afterlife, where wild-eyed floating spirits, pirate skeletons, and a disembodied jacket are just a few of the characters who appear on Orfeo’s journey. The 16mm cinematography by director of photography Marco De Pasquale is both vivid and hazy throughout, creating an atmosphere of simultaneous vibrancy and mystery, with Angelo Trabace’s alternately playful and melancholic score providing an aural corollary.
While inarguably a sui generis work, it’s also a reference-heavy one. Beyond the obvious mythological inspirations, one can find echoes of Tim Burton and Henry Selick’s lightly Gothic stop-motion films, classic children’s story adaptations like The Wizard of Oz and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, eclectic entries from the European art cinema canon including Fellini’s Toby Dammit and Chris Marker’s La Jetée, and Roger Corman’s vibrantly colored Edgar Allan Poe adaptations — and this is far from an exhaustive list. The main drawback to Villoresi’s liberal interpolation of cinematic and literary references is that it sometimes prevents Orfeo from standing on its own, instead rendering it overly indebted to an existing canon. For the most part, though, Villoresi’s conversation with inspirational works is a fruitful one, creating links to the film’s artistic forbears and incorporating each in such a way that is utterly distinct to the filmmaker.
Orfeo, on the whole, evinces a refreshing sense of lighthearted experimentation bolstered by seasoned craftsmanship. This is ultimately what is most satisfying about the film; the combination of artistic spontaneity and practical precision is a rare one, and creates an experience that feels both playful and solidly constructed. If the central romance feels a bit thin in comparison to the lavish attentions paid to the mise en scène, it’s forgivable, as Villoresi’s bold sense of invention and imagination are what truly propel the film forward and linger after its conclusion.
Published as part of Venice Film Festival 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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