By Jake Wilson
PARTHENOPE ★★★
(MA) 136 minutes
It’s tempting to say Paolo Sorrentino’s films resemble ads, but on reflection there aren’t many ads that resemble films by Paolo Sorrentino. The exceptions are mostly those ads directed by Sorrentino, like the one he did in 2022 for Bulgari, with Anne Hathaway and Zendaya twirling in a Roman villa, while petals rain from the ceiling and a peacock twitches its tail.
Celeste Dalla Porta with Daniele Rienzo and Dario Aita in Parthenope.Credit: Gianni Fiorito
In his new film Parthenope, Sorrentino strives to maintain the same lyrically deranged mood for more than two hours, aided by a different pair of collaborators. The first is the city of Naples, like a coloured ribbon unfurled between sky and sea. The second is the 26-year-old star Celeste Dalla Porta, who is more or less a newcomer to the screen (she had a bit part in Sorrentino’s last film, The Hand of God, and has done some TV).
Youthful heroine Parthenope is meant to be impossibly beautiful, and no one will deny Dalla Porta fits the bill. What she does in the film is closer to modelling than acting in the usual sense: she strolls through her scenes giving wry, tender, knowing glances, implying deep feelings without entirely letting on what they might be. But this, too, fits the conception of the character, who is really less a character than a symbol – representing Naples, or the idea of beauty itself, in an almost impersonal way.
Coming of age in the theoretically tumultuous 1970s, Parthenope loves the world but keeps her distance: even when she lets herself be seduced by one of her many admirers, the rapture never lasts. Her one abiding passion is for study, at which she excels, and for her crusty academic mentor (Silvio Orlando), whose bond with her is platonic in the strictest sense.
Dalla Porta and Gary Oldman, who plays one of Parthenope’s many suitors. Credit:
Still, miracles do happen: one moment she’s reading the short stories of John Cheever, the next Cheever himself (Gary Oldman) manifests in person like a genie, scattering pearls of jaded wisdom (“Beauty is like war”) and nearly falling off his chair.
Terms such as “allegory” and “magic realism” undoubtedly apply. But a better description is that the film takes place in the world high-end advertising conjures up – glamorous and self-ironising, where your heart’s desire can lie around any corner provided you’re not yearning for anything more than a necklace or a glass of champagne.
The difference here is that there’s no particular product to be sold, other than Parthenope, on one level an all-purpose object of desire. The additional level is the ironic one, implying that being viewed in this light is at least as isolating as it is gratifying – though how well this works as a defence against the charge of sexism is in the eye of the beholder.
Among the most mannered films yet from an extremely mannered filmmaker, Parthenope is full of Sorrentino’s habitual carefully placed incongruities: supporting actors scattered across the frame like band members on an album cover, or the thread of snot that dangles from one of the heroine’s nostrils as she weeps (as pristine as everything else about her, paralleling the director’s apparent faith that he’s expressing his genius every time he blows his nose).
There are dull stretches, especially near the end when Parthenope is supplied with at least one more older male mentor than she strictly needs. As for the absurdist punchline, this works in the manner of an irritating jingle, meant to be remembered rather than liked. But mostly the film is an experience you can drift through as the heroine drifts through life, enchanted and sceptical at once. Something to occupy the time, even if you’re less than fully sold.
Parthenope is released in cinemas on December 26.
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