Filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino has made, really, one kind of film for the majority of his career: decadent exercises in excess that observe the absurdity of power and/or wealth along with a profound longing for the beauty in life (which, somewhat archaically, extends primarily to the female form, in and out of haute couture). Though the particulars will differ from film to film, by and large they all are sunny, stylish affairs that capitalize on the picturesque qualities of the director’s native Italy and are marked by an unabashed leering quality; both for their surroundings and their comely inhabitants. To that last point, the other commonality across the filmmaker’s body of work is an overwhelmingly male perspective, particularly as it pertains to matters of the heart and the loins. Women in Sorrentino films are often reduced to disposable playthings (Loro), figures of lustful obsession just beyond one’s reach (The Hand of God), statuesque goddesses stoking the vigor of yore (Youth), and mysteries to turn over endlessly in one’s mind (the Oscar-winning The Great Beauty). And this is perhaps why the filmmaker has, for the first time with Parthenope, made a film with a female protagonist; a woman so singularly attractive and transfixing to men that she lives up to the Greek siren she’s named after. Yet, in doing so, Sorrentino has unwittingly exposed the limits of his imagination. For all of its surface-level pleasures, the film often amounts to simply posing the facile question: “What if a woman were both beautiful and intelligent?” Will wonders never cease!
The film’s title character (whose name is pronounced Par-thenn-o-pea) is played by newcomer Celeste Dalla Porta, who we see literally being born in the waters off the coast of Naples — waterbirths in 1950s Italy doesn’t seem like an especially common occurrence, but as a visual metaphor it’s forgivable — only to emerge from the sea 18 years later (passing in the blink of an edit) in a string bikini, inspiring desire in all who catch sight of her. Parthenope spends idyllic days of young adulthood lounging in her skimpy bathing suit (or less), smoking cigarettes, and reading John Cheever, willfully indifferent to the wagging tongues of both the maid’s adult son (Dario Aita), who grew up infatuated with her, as well as her older brother (Daniele Rienzo), who appears to harbor an unnatural affinity for his little sister. But while the world seems fit to view her as something to be possessed, continually steering her toward becoming a rich man’s mistress or an actress, what Parthenope truly longs for is the world of academia. Enrolling in university under the stern guidance of the owl-looking professor Marotta (Silvio Orlando), Parthenope excels in the discipline of anthropology despite self-disparagingly claiming to have no idea what the field actually entails. However, the events of life, including a tragedy which rocks her family to its core, keeps pulling her from her desired path, and the film follows the character across a digressive journey of growth stretched over seven decades.
Sorrentino doesn’t make what you would call tightly plotted films; there’s an innate languor to them, with one of the filmmaker’s favorite tricks being pausing the action so we can observe dozens of tertiary characters stopping to stare off at the horizon as music swells, merely taking in the wonder of their surroundings (and with it, the enormity of existence itself). As with his earlier works, Parthenope is primarily a series of debauched interludes that would feel right at home in La Dolce Vita, highlighting clandestine spaces accessible only to the rich and fabulous. A trip to the island of Capri as a young adult leads to the character not only being courted by a wealthy suitor who literally hovers over her in his private helicopter, but also a long afternoon spent in the slurry company of the very same John Cheever (Gary Oldman, in a small role seemingly to satisfy international financiers) whose literature brought her such joy years earlier; somewhat embarrassingly, she doesn’t recognize him even after leafing through the typewritten prose he has laying around his hotel suite. Her brief foray into the world of acting puts her in the path of an embittered diva (Luisa Ranieri) who rails against Naples as a two-bit burg filled with lowlifes who will never amount to anything. She’s even dispatched to report on a supposed miracle and, in the process, willingly giving herself to a corpulent Bishop (Peppe Lanzetta). The film regularly jumps forward in time — a year here, five years there — with the title character shedding lovers and coming ever closer to self-actualization, often in tandem with rededicating herself to the modest pursuit of becoming a professor. Structurally the film is similar to the aforementioned The Great Beauty, albeit on a greatly expanded timeline and lacking the weariness and impish glint of the splendid Toni Servillo, Sorrentino’s longtime leading man who’s very much missed here. The films are specifically alike in the way they treat pageantry and depravity as window dressing on a journey to uncover an almost plain-spoken meaning of life at the intersection of tragedy and comedy (e.g., a horse-drawn funeral procession stuck idling behind a city works vehicle spraying the streets down to stop the spread of Cholera).
But there remains a bombshell-sized void at the film’s center. Although we’re repeatedly told that Parthenope is more than just a pretty face, the character remains a thinly-conceived cipher throughout, with the inexperienced Dalla Porta unable to surface hidden depths or project maturity or guile beyond her years no matter how often other characters are compelled to comment upon her learnedness (there’s an old adage about showing vs. telling that feels appropriate here). The character lacks curiosity and an inner light; she says things that are drolly amusing but rarely laughs herself. In perhaps an unintentionally revealing decision, the character has no female contemporaries or confidants, preferring to spend her time with older women who can impart jaded wisdom and handsome young men who drape themselves over her. The primary rhetorical device employed by the film is saddling Parthenope with an endless stream of fortune-cookie witticisms that she can wield as snappy rejoinders. On rejecting the advances of a potential lover, she coos: “Desire is a mystery and sex is its funeral.” Disappointment is registered as “like kissing a beautiful mouth and discovering with your tongue that there’s no teeth.” And so it goes in this vein to the point that the Orlando character is compelled to highlight that snappy comebacks can serve as an intellectual crutch. Is this all actually florid nonsense or does it only sound like it because it’s Dalla Porta who has to say it?
In truth, Sorrentino’s entire approach is to position the character as a living metaphor — the film’s title is even superimposed over the skyline of Naples, which itself functions as a siren’s call throughout the film — although interpreting specific references is perhaps best left to an Italophile. All the same, there’s a pronounced lack of lifeblood to both the performance and the film; a self-seriousness that makes the film laughable in ways Sorrentino likely didn’t intend. The film walks right up to the line of implying that Parthenope’s beauty is in fact a curse; her burden to bear that she’s only rid of once she’s arrived at retirement age (Italian screen legend Stefania Sandrelli briefly appears as the character for the film’s coda, still stunning in her late 70s), which feels rather blinkered in its characterization. Sorrentino knows how to wring melancholy from earthly delights like, really, no one else currently working, but for the first time he feels out of his depth. One shudders to think that’s solely the result of assuming a female perspective, but, then, if you’ve spent your entire career viewing half the population as an object, you are starting at an obvious disadvantage.
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