Dimade the outstanding filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, the same as “The Great Beauty”, with a story full of obvious, a beautiful protagonist, and numerous postcards for tourists.
In a scene of “Parthenope”the new movie of Paolo Sorrentinothe mature businessman asks the beautiful girl “Would you marry with me if I had forty years?”, And she replicates “Would you marry with me if I had forty more years?” Then someone observes that there are three kinds of answers: the obvious, the intelligent, and those who say something really. That was an intelligent response. Too bad the obvious predominates here.
“Parthenope” It is full of obvious. Pretentious film, only has an exquisite visual composition, a few brief chapters of surprising imagination, and a divine creature at the head of a good cast. Exquisiteness expands everywhere, true that with the aesthetics of advertising cinema of onerous brands. The surprising imagination is in the initial radiant shots of light, on a night walk through the low funds with an endiosado capomafia, and also in a painful desecration scene in the crypt of the Cathedral of San Genaro. Those are also very allegorical scenes of the luminous origin, the human mud and the mixture of superstition and perversion that characterize Naples according to Sorrentino.
As for the divine creature, she is Celeste Dalla Portaa perfect figure model with a look capable of expressing sweetness, security in itself, seductive mood, enjoy life, understanding of others, somewhat melancholy and another little sadness. The creature that represents, a cultured, elegant, sensual and discreet young woman at the same time, is defined in the epilogue of history: “It was sad and frivolous. Determined and apathetic. Like Naples.”
There is the intention. Parthenope was the name of a siren whose body shaped the Gulf of Naples, and was also the first name of the town that would later become the city of everything beautiful and of all vices, that one that was said to be seen once and time should be seen and then die. Sorrentino He wanted to worship the female beauty and the hometown in one and symbolic union. I had already paid tribute to Rome in “The Great Beauty” Through the character of an old man loaded with knowledge and irony. But there is a difference: that vision of the decadent Roman beauty was blood, that of now, dedicated to the decadent Naples, is too long and languid, seems lymphatic.
Anyway, what you want is not always achieved. Accompany to Celeste Dalla Porta The eminents Silvio Orlando (Professor Marotta, same surname of a famous Neapolitan writer), Gary Oldman (The American storyteller John Cheever on vacation for Italy), Marlon Joubert (Carilindo Capo Antonio Criscuolo, true surname of a powerful family of the camorra), Alfonso Santagata (The former mayor and owner of a shipping fleet Achile Lauro, a real character that appears here as a sponsor of the baby), Peppe Lanzotta (The degenerate bishop), the venerable Stefania Sandrelli (Parthenope at the time of retirement, beast revenge), Darío Aita (the eternal crush of humble origin) and Isabella Ferrari.
Produced exactly the same as Sophia Loren in a remembered advertising of glasses, Ferrari He plays a successful Neapolitan actress who despises his own, and for the worse it says it publicly. The actress herself came out to clarify doubts in Italy: “My character is just an archetype. Poor Sophia has nothing to do. She has never expressed himself in a bad way about Naples or her people.”
Filming places that can be seen, Villa Lauro and Villa Grotta Marina, the old Federico II University, the Umberto Gallery and the interior of the San Genaro Cathedral (only one take, the rest is copied in studies) and in the end the gardens of Augustus in Capri, overlooking the sea.
“Parthenope” (Italy-France, 2024); Dir.: Paolo Sorrentino. Int.: Celeste Dalla Porta, Silvio Orlando, Gary Oldman, Dario Aita, Stefania Sandrelli, Peppe Lanzotta.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
