“Tell me a story,” the earthy young woman asks the shy Latin tutor early in Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet.” What story, he asks? “Something that moves you.”

She’s made a shrewd choice of storyteller. This awkward young man seems to have a way with words as he recounts the tragic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. As well he should: One day he’ll be known as the finest wordsmith in the world.

But Agnes, though being wooed by William Shakespeare himself, doesn’t have the same relationship with words, nor need for them. Unlike her bookish suitor, her mystical nature — some say her mother was a forest witch! — and appetite for life lend her ready access to a seemingly volcanic array of emotions, from giddy joy to unfathomable grief, all at the tips of her earth-soiled fingers.

And volcanic is the best

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