Parky At the Pictures (1/5/2025)

(Review of Parthenope)

PARTHENOPE.

A day before Paolo Sorrentino's latest feature, Parthenope, goes on general release, CinemaItaliaUK is hosting a special May Day preview, courtesy of Picturehouse.

Since debuting with One Man Up (2001), Paolo Sorrentino had worked frequently with its star, Toni Servillo. There are those who prefer The Consequences of Love (2004), Il Divo (2009), The Great Beauty (2013), and Loro (2018) to such non-Servillo outings as

The Family Friend (2006), This Must Be the Place (2011), Youth (2015), and The Hand of God (2021), even though the latter was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Unfortunately, few will consider that Parthenope tilts the balance.

Born in the sea in 1950 and cleped after the Greek siren after who Naples was named, Parthenope Di Sangro (Celeste Dalla Porta) is presented with a bed from Versailles by a commander friend of the family (Alfonso Santagata). Eighteen years later, she allows the Sandrino (Dario Aita), the besotted son of the housekeeper, to watch her swim in the bay and gaze at her through the bed's gauzy curtains. He wonders what she thinks about, but the majority of those who watch her sashay in slow-motion to a class at the university are interested solely in her beauty.

At her viva examination, Parthenope gives as good as she gets from Professor Devoto Marotta (Silvio Orlando) and returns home to Posillipo to cheek the Commander when he asks if she would marry him if he was 40 years younger by demanding to know if he would want her if she was four decades older. She reads John Cheever at meal times, where mother Maggie (Silvia Degrandi) notices the unsisterly nature of the kiss she gives older brother, Raimondo (Daniele Rienzo), and father Sasa (Lorenzo Gleijeses) warns her that she has to be careful with her sibling, as he is overly sensitive.

By 1973, Parthenope is becoming aware of the impact she has on people. When she travels to Capri with Raimondo and Sandrino, she is repeatedly asked on dates by a rich man in a helicopter. But she prefers the company of John Cheever (Gary Oldman), who invites her to his lodgings to confess that he could fall under her spell if he wasn't gay. As he dozes drunkenly, Parthenope removes her dress so that Sandrino can look at her through the window as she smokes. He offers her a flower and she skips away.

Talent agent, Lidia Rocca (Emanuela Villagrossi), offers to represent Parthenope if she ever decides to become an actress. At a disco, the entrepreneur introduces himself to Parthenope. He takes her to his luxurious home and expects her to sleep with him. When she refuses, he insults her intelligence and she leaves. She bumps into Cheever and she asks if she can join him on his constitutional. But he refuses to deprive her of a second of her youth.

Raimondo has hooked up with heiress Alba Nardella (Daphne Morelli), but is too smitten with his sister to make love to her. He joins Parthenope and Sandrino and they embrace each other. Unable to watch them kissing, Raimondo wanders away and throws himself off a balcony into the sea. Parthenope resists Sandrino's attempts to console her, as they walk behind a horse-drawn hearse. She looks wistfully across to the island before turning her attention to street-cleaning cart that has broken down in their path.

Banished after her mother blames her for Raimondo's death, Parthenope starts to study anthropology with Professor Marotta and she asks if she can write a thesis on suicide. He suggests that she tackles the cultural impact of the miracle instead. It's now 1974 and she also visits acting coach Flora Malva (Isabella Ferrari) with a view to making films. With her face hidden by a black veil because of excessive plastic surgery, Flora tells Parthenope about fading actress Greta Cool (Luisa Ranieri) so she can trash her reputation. Inviting Parthenope into her steam room, Flora requests a kiss and refuses to remove her mask. Realising she won't be accepted unless she consents, Parthenope kisses the older woman on the lips.

Asked by her father to conceive a child to help him regain his enthusiasm for life, Parthenope attends a New Year reception for Greta Cool, who is returning to Naples after a long time in the north. She deplores the fact she has never been regarded as an icon in her home city and insults her audience by accusing Neapolitans of being crooks and whingers who blame everyone else for their woes. When she's not paid her appearance fee, Greta gets into a fight and Parthenope returns her wig. She's informed that she has the beauty to be a star but lacks the fire in the eyes to convey her inner emotions.

As she leaves, Parthenope meets Roberto Criscuolo (Marlon Joubert), a Camorra boss who takes her to an impoverished neighbourhood, where she is shocked by the sight of the ragged children. Roberto takes her to a family event to witness a member of his clan consummate their marriage in front of witnesses so that the conception of a mutual child can bring an end to an enduring feud. He has sex with Parthenope, who becomes pregnant. However, she decides to have an abortion.

Before leaving for a job in Milan, Sandrino calls on Parthenope. She blames him for Raimondo's death, as he pursued her while knowing how it would affect his friend. He thinks she's being harsh and insists that he was her first love. They kiss, but she warns him they will never see each other again and advises him to stick by his wife, even if their marriage crumbles because life will only disappoint him and he needs someone to rely upon.

With Italy facing social unrest, Parthenope abandons her acting ambitions and returns to complete her thesis. Marotta invites her to become his assistant and he is touched when she passes a pregnant woman even though she fluffs her viva. He reminds her that they had once made a pact never to judge each other and he expects this to continue now they are colleagues. She is touched when he offers sympathy for the loss of her brother and she commends him for raising his son after they were abandoned by his wife. They hug in the quadrangle, as she is grateful to have someone who values her mind over her body and who accepts her for who she is. She gets a similar feeling when she paddles a kayak around the bay and gets waves from people, as she passes old haunts.

Marotta suggests moving to Trento to get teaching experience before returning to replace him when he retires. He also warns her about Cardinal Tesorone (Peppe Lanzetta) when she goes to the cathedral to research an article on the liquification of the blood of St Gennaro. Parthenope is amused by the older man's vanity and impertinence and his fury when the miracle fails to occur on the altar and an elderly woman in the congregation claims a miracle because she has started menstruating.

Tesorone takes Parthenope to a party and she comes across the commander, who teases her about his marriage proposal when she was still a teenager. She watches society women fawning over the cardinal before accepting his invitation to try on the saint's vestments. He stands before her in his underwear and removes the mitre from her head. He compliments her on never using her beauty to get ahead in life, but she isn't sure she deserves his praise. Instead, she removes Gennaro's mantle and asks Tesorone to make love with her. As they have sex, the blood in the ampule starts to liquify.

Shortly afterwards, Marotta invites Parthenope to his home. She asks him to define anthropology and he claims it's the ability to see when things like youth, beauty, and desire have faded. He introduces her to his son, an outsize infant `made of water and salt, like the sea'. Stefano (Alessandro Paniccia) chuckles when she touches his tummy and his father rests his head on the boy's arm. Suddenly, it's 2023 and Parthenope (Stefania Sandrelli) is about to retire from the university at Trento. She bows bashfully to acknowledge the applause of those who have assembled to see her off.

Returning to Naples, she runs into crowds celebrating Napoli's third scudetto. She takes the ferry to Capri to come to terms with Raimondo's loss. As she recalls past people and events, she is struck by how often she was asked what she was thinking. Only now does she realise that she had been contemplating the secret of love (`Love as a means of survival has been a failure - or maybe not.') and she smiles as a float of chanting supporters passes her in the sky blue darkness because she has finally accepted that she is as complex and contradictory as the city that had shaped her.

The loss of youth and beauty are hardly new topics for Paolo Sorrentino, but his nine previous outings have not endured quite so many accusations that he has prioritised the male gaze in depicting his female characters. The criticism of this paean to his birthplace has been exacerbated by the fact that Sorrentino was 53 when he made the film and that the debuting Celeste Dalla Porta was half his age when he photographed her in various states of undress. There is some validity to these charges of objectivisation, as this does sometimes feel like a glossy commercial. But, by having Parthenope frequently fix the camera with her Mona Lisa smile, Sorrentino is also asking the audience to contemplate their own reaction to the imagery and how they look at other people in their daily experience.

While the voyeuristic element will dominate any discussion of the film, it's important not to lose sight of Sorrentino's attempt to capture the spirit of a city that defies easy categorisation. In a way, the blend of nostalgia, irony, insight, and regret often makes this feel like a cross between Federico Fellini's Amarcord (1973) and Peter Sarstedt's 1969 hit, `Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?' - which contained the lines that readily come to mind during the Criscuolo episode, `I remember the back streets of Naples/Two children begging in rags/Both touched with a burning ambition/To shake off their lowly-born tags, they tried.' There's even an acrid whiff of John Schlesinger's Darling (1965), which, of course, has an Italian interlude.

Given the emphasis on the visuals, it should be remembered that cinematographer Daria D'Antonio is a woman, who insists that her aim was to present Parthenope in terms of beauty, freedom, and mystery. Designed by Carlo Poggioli and Yves Saint Laurent's Anthony Vaccarello, Dalla Porta's costume have a vital role to play in delineating her evolving personality, while also reinforcing the cautionary theme of judging by superficial surfaces. Despite such ethical gambits and an evocative score by Lele Marchitelli, this fetishistic fantasy remains a difficult film to watch on many levels. He once told a reporter that he knows very little about women. On the basis of his first feature with a female protagonist, one can only conclude he was right. Time, perhaps, to re-connect with Toni Servillo.