Parthenope, 2024.
Written and Directed by Paolo Sorrentino.
Starring Celeste Dalla Porta, Stefania Sandrelli, Gary Oldman, Silvio Orlando, Luisa Ranieri, Peppe Lanzetta, Isabella Ferrari, Silvia Degrandi, Lorenzo Gleijeses, Daniele Rienzo, Dario Aita, Marlon Joubert, Alfonso Santagata, Biagio Izzo, Nello Mascia, Francesca Romana Bergamo, Brando Improta, Riccardo Lai, Alessandro Paniccià, Cristiano Scotto di Galletta, Luigi Bruno, and Francesco Russo.
SYNOPSIS:
Parthenope, born in the sea near Naples in 1950, is beautiful, enigmatic, and intelligent. She is shamelessly courted by many. However, beauty comes at a cost.
Great beauty Parthenope is learning how to live life. Named after the city and also referring to a sea siren in Greek mythology, writer/director Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope is technically trying to tell that story with his beguiling protagonist (an impressively mysterious and enchanting debut performance from Celeste Dalla Porta) but ends up getting lost in equally transfixing Italian scenery (the filmmaker is once again working with cinematographer Daria D’Antonio) and an episodic structure of wildly uneven investment. The previously mentioned mysterious part is perhaps taken a bit too far.
Style over substance is to be expected by Paulo Sorrentino by now. However, his obsession with youthful beauty as a disruptor, a potentially enigmatic characteristic that can be leveraged for personal gain or secondary to a woman’s intelligence (not the breakthrough, novel concept he seems to think this is for perceiving a woman), feels shallow here. This filmmaker has already made films called Youth and The Great Beauty (winning an Oscar for the latter), so to label this new picture a retread is an understatement. Roughly ten minutes in, one wants to sigh, “he is making this kind of movie yet again, but this time centering a woman,” which is disappointing enough but not nearly as frustrating as watching intriguing elements pop up only to be squandered through abstractness and a refusal to interrogate core themes through characterization.
Paolo Sorrentino and his team still bring out the magnificence of Italy as strikingly as perhaps no other modern working filmmakers, yet that has stopped being enough for a recommendation and is starting to feel like a crutch. Ambitiously, the film chronicles an entire life, beginning in 1950 following Parthenope’s birth in the sea, immediately jumping forward 18 years to a desirable young adult with everyone from creepy older wealthy family friends, boys her age, and her brother lusting over her (because it wouldn’t be a Paolo Sorrentino film if there also weren’t something uncomfortably incestuous happening.)
In between working on her university thesis and hungering for the true meaning of anthropology, Parthenope ends up in a series of adventures ranging from a life-changing summer vacation, encounters with admired authors of depressed fiction (Gary Oldman in a brief appearance, putting in her mind the disruptive power of her beauty), similarly broken down and unhappy actresses (there is a stint where she tiptoes around entering that industry), and generally experimenting with the power that attractiveness gives her (with motives sometimes remaining elusive.)
The grand lesson Paolo Sorrentino has in mind is that (and bear with me because I know this is going to sound regressive) beauty and youth are tightly intertwined, but that one can’t truly love or see people, the world, and other beauty for what it is until accumulating an undefined amount of life experience. Across that life, Parthenope suffers a tragic loss (an incident she regularly strives to learn more about through hoping to understand anthropology one day), makes painfully difficult life decisions, furthers a wholesome connection with her professor, and over time, apparently comes to a greater understanding of the nature of things. There are also third-act juxtapositions of beauty that are so unsubtle and fantastical, yet perhaps inadvertently demonstrate how blunt and uninteresting Paolo Sorrentino’s messaging is. It also doesn’t help that the messaging is shaky.
Admittedly, Parthenope isn’t necessarily a bore, although it’s sluggish whenever indulging in one of its less interesting segments. Aside from the undeniably exquisite craftsmanship and captivating lead performance, several heavier plot points show promise to be fleshed out into something rich that expands on Parthenope’s character and perception of the world, which is clearly the film’s goal. Typically, it goes back to being tedious.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
