Batten down the hatches – a hurricane of Paolo Sorrentino self-indulgence is about to make landfall via A24‘s Parthenope (now streaming on HBO Max), a coming-of-age drama that’s as beautiful as it is long. Which is to say, very. The Italian filmmaker concocts-slash-throws-together an ode to beauty, longing, beauty, age, beauty and any number of mysterious things – including beauty, natch – starring newcomer Celeste Dalla Porta as an impossibly easy-on-the-eyes woman named after a Greek siren. The film is so very Sorrentino in its equal dosage of repellent pretentiousness and, well, seductive pretentiousness, but whether it adds up to something watchable is the question.
PARTHENOPE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: OK WE GET IT PAOLO, PARTHENOPE IS GORGEOUS. This woman was born directly into a lagoon on the coast of Naples in 1950, and now it’s 1968 and she emerges from the water like a creature of myth, untouchable, in a bikini, with flowing hair and eyes and a hint of a smile that only Da Vinci could ever capture. She lounges in the endless sun, then sleeps at night under a wisp of a sheet in an ornate antique carriage gifted to her by her bellicose orb of a godfather. Critics of the male gaze, look away; there’s still more than two hours to go. It’s boner city for Sandrino (Dario Aita), the son of the family housekeeper, and it’s unfortunately the same for her brother Raimondo (Daniele Rienzo). BEAUTY CARES NOT FOR YOUR MORTAL TABOOS.
Parthenope’s mere existence answers a fundamental question: If the solar system orbits the sun, does the whole of the universe have an equivalent focal point? Yep. She’s right there, center-frame, usually on the balcony in various states of semi-undress. But she is not an empty vessel. Within is a well of mystery so deep, everyone in her sphere inevitably recites the film’s mantra at her: “What are you thinking about?” I don’t think she ever directly answers. Yet she does lounge in the lightness of being, blissfully unaware (or maybe totally aware?) of her head-exploding pulchritude, uttering inscrutable profundities like “the future is bigger than me and you” or “sex is the death of mystery” or “I don’t know anything, but I like everything” (or later in her life, “young love is good for nothing”). Where does she come up with this stuff?
Not that Parthe, as some call her, is content to be idly rich her entire life. She attends university, where she cultivates mutual intellectual admiration with her professor, Marotta (Silvio Orlando), the only person in the picture, male or female, who doesn’t find themselves fantasizing about being her tiny lap dog. He encourages her to write a thesis about miracles, and I’m shocked she didn’t just write her autobiography: Once upon a time, I got up, looked like a billion dollars, mused something blandly intellectual, and went to bed. The next day, I got up, looked like a billion dollars, mused something blandly intellectual, and went to bed. Then there was another time when I got up, looked like a billion dollars, mused something blandly intellectual, and went to bed. By the way, I’m from Naples. Etc.
Anyway. Now she lounges in the lightness of being doing homework, reading John Cheever and wondering what, exactly, anthropology truly is. Do you know what anthropology is? Nobody does! The narrative tracks her through the 1970s and ’80s as she’s stymied by elemental tragedy, its ripples persisting in her studious pursuit of the anthropology question via a career in academia, and in her various encounters with others. There’s a rich jerk who tries to impress her with his helicopter, a despondent Cheever (Gary Oldman!) trying to drink away his gay, a talent agent who hides her face due to botched plastic surgery, a famous actress who insults the whole of Naples with one ruthless public monologue, a mafioso who takes her to watch the conception of a child who’ll unite two families, and a piggish priest who waddles around the holy sanctum in a teensy red speedo. For Parthenope, these incidents all represent rites of passage, and reflections of her exquisite inner existential pain. Of course, no matter what she does or how happy or sad or lonely or upset she gets, she looks fucking amazing. Does her beauty go deeper than her wardrobe, hair and skin, though? And can we even get close enough to determine that?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Sorrentino explored similar themes with The Great Beauty, which won him an Oscar.
Performance Worth Watching: Dalla Porta manages to belie any potential objectification of her superficial bounty by elbowing Sorrentino aside just enough to give Parthenope something of an inner life. Even better is Stefania Sandrelli, who plays Parthenope later in life, in the film’s final scenes, making the absolute most of very little screen time.
Memorable Dialogue: Cheever basks in the everything of young Pathenope:
Cheever: Are you aware of the disruption your beauty causes?
Parthenope: I’m starting to suspect something.
Sex and Skin: Some graphic nudity and semi-graphic sex, and enough near-nudity to fill multiple episodes of The Peter Griffin Sideboob Hour.
Our Take: There’s little argument against Sorrentino’s ability to craft tonally, stylistically distinctive films (inspired as they are by Fellini), and Parthenope is as enrapturing and annoying as anything he’s made. His camera glides effortlessly through a meticulous mise en scene, and cinematographer Daria D’Antonio captures the imagery therein with infectious admiration. It’s perhaps dumb to say the film about beauty is itself beautiful, but it’s extraordinarily so, existing in a strange nigh-dreamlike pseudoreality filled with outsized characters who say nutty things while standing against striking backdrops. (Another, more depraved and experimental filmmaker who comes to mind? Alejandro Jodorwsky, a name I don’t evoke lightly.)
Which is to say it’s much, much easier for the characters to excuse themselves from our memories than the quietly searing imagery. And while Sorrentino quite artfully jabs at life, death, nostalgia, aging, innocence, love, lust and other grandiose fundamentals of the human condition, the only overriding idea here is a trite one: How can someone so goddamn beautiful be so lonely? Praise Sorrentino for showing little interest in exploring conventional ideas about psychological trauma, the topic du jour of so many “serious” modern films, but one gets the sense he’s so swept up in the phantasmagoric vision of Dalla Porta in succulent eveningwear and swimwear (note: famed fashion house Saint Laurent is a producing partner), he neglected to render the Parthenope name ironic.
And so Parthenope sort of accidentally renders its title character a literal goddess. It’s a persuasive approach; I must admit feeling frequent states of paralysis, tied to my inability to pry my eyes from Dalla Porta’s magnificence. Well, maybe some of it was boredom, but she is objectively lovely. I also lack the depth of insight of all the other characters, who repeatedly say how witty and smart Parthenope is – it’s not like I don’t believe it, but perhaps it’s the language barrier? The character and performance never rise to the robustness of the images, and the film suffers for it, loping along with vague intention, essentially being a stringing-together of odd, almost Odyssey-like encounters comprising the key moments of Parthenope’s life. The film feels too often dramatically inert, and the emotional punch it needs arrives only ever so slightly at the tail end of a movie that has filled our eyes to the brim but leaves our hearts empty, like we’ve been staring at a high-artfully conceived magazine ad for two hours. That love we think we feel for the unapproachable model? Sorry to say, it’s fleeting — and it ain’t true.
Our Call: Parthe-nope. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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