Film

The Wonders

Alice Rohrwacher's quietly devastating portrait of a Tuscan honey-farming family teetering on financial collapse. A father clings to tradition while his eldest daughter schemes to enter a reality TV contest, desperate to save their home. It's achingly real, funny in small moments, built from silences and glances. For anyone who loves slow cinema about dignity, money, and what we'll sacrifice.

TMDb rating3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a slow, sun-bleached family drama where the textures of work, the heat, the hives and the rough hands, say more than the dialogue does.

Skip it if you need a tight plot engine, since this one drifts between the honey farm, a reality TV pitch and a quiet boy, its threads rarely knotting neatly.

What it asks of you: Settle in for a long, unhurried stretch of days and dust, where the mood drifts more than the plot does, and little is explained outright.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Fits2016

A girl tries to fit into a competitive dance team in Cincinnati; like The Wonders, it's about adolescent desire, belonging, and the gap between who you are and who you're expected to be.

But The tone is elliptical and body-focused rather than plot-driven. Some find its mystery frustrating; others think that's exactly the point.

The Fits poster

Moonlight2016

Three chapters following a Black man's life in Miami; like Rohrwacher, Barry Jenkins builds character through observation, silence, and the spaces between people. Tender and precise.

But It's meditative rather than narrative. If you want conventional dramatic structure, you'll feel the absence.

Moonlight poster

The Woman in the Fifth2011

Kristin Scott Thomas in a Paris apartment, economic anxiety mounting, reality fracturing—a similar descent into precarity and moral compromise, but far more claustrophobic and unsettling.

But It tips into psychological thriller territory, which shifts the tone entirely. Some feel it's confused about what kind of film it wants to be.

The Woman in the Fifth poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Wonders

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans1927

Both films are fundamentally about the collision between tradition and seduction—the countryside versus the promise of elsewhere. Murnau invented the grammar; Rohrwacher speaks it fluently.

F.W. Murnau's 1927 masterpiece about a man tempted away from his wife by a city woman, told in nearly pure visual language. It's the ancestor of every film about rural people tempted by modernity, including The Wonders.

But Silent film at nearly 90 years old. The pacing and visual grammar will feel alien if you've never sat with silent cinema. It requires adjustment.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans poster
More like this (5)

Pasolini2014

The final days of the Italian poet-filmmaker; like Rohrwacher, it's interested in contradiction—tradition versus transgression, the country versus the city, what Italy has become.

But It's fragmented and essayistic rather than biographically coherent. Some find it pretentious; others think that's necessary for its subject.

Pasolini poster

The Handmaiden2016

A con artist and a thief infiltrate a wealthy household in 1930s Korea. It shares Rohrwacher's gift for tension created through small gestures and unspoken knowledge.

But It's operatic and twisty in ways The Wonders isn't. If you want intimate realism, this luxurious baroque will feel like a different language.

The Handmaiden poster

Burning2018

A young writer in Seoul orbits a wealthy man's mystery. Lee Chang-dong shares Rohrwacher's patience, her interest in economic jealousy, and her faith that observation can feel like violence.

But It's nearly three hours of accumulation with no clear resolution. The meaning is buried so deep some viewers feel cheated rather than moved.

Burning poster

The Bling Ring2013

Both are about people willing to compromise themselves on camera for the camera's sake. Both find that moment where you realize the spectacle might destroy what you're trying to save.

Sofia Coppola's film about wealthy teenagers burgling celebrities' homes. It sounds nothing like The Wonders, but it's equally interested in how desperation and aspiration drive people to perform for cameras.

But It's glossy, vapid on purpose, filled with celebrity culture and teenage narcissism. The register is entirely different—pop rather than pastoral.

The Bling Ring poster

The Turin Horse2011

Both are elegies for a way of life that cannot survive. But where Rohrwacher finds moments of grace and humor, Tarr finds only the slow collapse of everything.

Béla Tarr's final film: a man and woman in a cottage, declining, as the world decays around them. It's philosophical, mythic, and made almost entirely of waiting and silence.

But It's bleak to the point of nihilism, shot in black and white, with barely any plot. If The Wonders felt slow, this is an entirely different pace—glacial and final.

The Turin Horse poster

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