Paolo Sorrentino may not be the most characteristically Italian filmmaker, but he’s obviously the most self-conscious one, an attribute that could be extended to his status in post-New Wave European cinema. Many of the themes of his latest film, the title of which is the name of the lead character, a woman (played until her early 30s by newcomer Celeste Dalla Porta) whose beauty is so “disruptive” that it makes it a challenge for her to live anything like a normal existence, come across as cliches: the search for meaning (or, in Parthenope’s case, “answers to all my questions”), the enigma of “home,” the future as an uncharted land. Sorrentino explores these matters with a visual gusto that eventually fails to make the kind of intellectual points he seems to be driving at. Parthenope remains a cipher whose main interest for the viewer is in whether or not she is sexually available, because that quality seems to be hard-wired into every scene.

Born to a well-to-do Naples family whose patriarch runs a shipping company for an older man—her godfather, thus giving him the right to name her (after a mythical figure associated with Mt. Vesuvius)—Parthenope is blessed with more than just female pulchritude. She is both intelligent and remarkably intuitive, but also, as her off-and-on would-be boyfriend from childhood, Sandrino (Dario Aita), tells her before they part forever, “presumptuous and ruthless.” She majors in anthropology in university though she claims, even to the much older professor who recognizes her talents, to have no idea “what anthropology means.” It’s difficult to tell if Sorrentino is deriding academic self-seriousness or showing off his own considerable worldliness in the clever banter between Parthenope and her professor-patron (Silvio Orlando), and this ambiguity of intention affects other plot points as they develop. There’s a totally gratuitous sequence where, while on vacation in Capri with her brother, Raimondo (Daniele Rienzo), and Sandrino, she meets John Cheever (Gary Oldman, constantly surrounded by dozens of empty liquor bottles), an author she has always admired. At first I thought Cheever was a figment of her imagination, but Sorrentino doesn’t make that apparent. Likewise, in the midst of her studies, Parthenope is scouted by a talent agent, who hooks her up with a veteran film star (Isabella Ferrari, mostly in shadow due to the character’s botched cosmetic surgery) to turn her into an actress, a gambit that falls flat after a comically acidic encounter with an embittered starlet (Luisa Rainieri) who goes off on how lowly the people of Naples are (she should know, since she left the place as soon as she could). So it’s back to university where Parthenope soon outshines her fellow thesis candidates with a study of “the cultural frontiers of the miraculous.” 

But while Parthenope’s life journey does encounter potholes (the suicide of her brother, who is in love with her; the failing fortunes of her father; an abortion) professional success seems to be her birthright, and Sorrentino can’t quite make us believe that it doesn’t have everything to do with her sexual allure. While conducting research for her thesis, she interviews a priest (“the devil, actually,” comments her professor) who will introduce her to the secrets of the Miracle of San Gennaro but who also manages to seduce her, as if her yielding to him was not just part of her sentimental education, but a prerequisite for understanding the crux of her thesis. Sex in pursuit of intellectual rigor: How Italian can you get?

In Italian and English. Opens Aug. 22 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Marunouchi Piccadilly (050-6875-0075), Bunkamura Le Cinema Shibuya Miyashita (050-6875-5280).

Parthenope home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2024 The Apartment Srl-Numero 10 Srl-Pathe Films-Piperfilm Srl/Gianni Fiorto