‘Parthenope’: The esthete Sorrentino turns to Celeste Dalla Porta | Culture

I have mixed feelings about this one. Parthenope with a name as exotic as it is difficult to pronounce. And I don’t look away from the screen during all of the footage, but not because I’m passionate about what Paolo Sorrentino is telling me (I even wonder if it’s a flowery exercise in nothingness), but because of the continuous presence of an actress called Celeste Dalla Porta: prodigious beauty, permanent seduction, a magnet in close-up, medium shot or long shot. Pampered by a master of the image as the director of the captivating The great beauty. Parthenope He is supposed to photograph Naples, or he invents it being faithful to his memories and his poetic sense… But if the protagonist doesn’t appear I get a little disappointed.

And the enormous visual sense of this director is appreciated, but especially when he dedicates it to the protagonist. There are films in which the maximum enjoyment is offered by the script, or the dialogues, or the story, or the way in which it is narrated, or the performances. But here I only have eyes (also ears, although less) to fall in love with the face, the physique, the style, the class of that incredible lady. You can spend infinite time observing the wonders of the world, whether landscapes or ruins. Well, the same thing happens with certain people. In other words, may God or the devil continue to preserve our sight for those of us who no longer have many more desirable things than observing beauty.

Sorrentino makes his usual brilliant parade of images. They are so well cared for that sometimes they smell like luxury advertising. And he accompanies them with suggestive songs and music. And what does it count Parthenope? Well, in addition to being a creature marked by internal tribulations, of awakening desire in a heterodox gallery of men, of suffering doubts and sentimental crossroads without losing his smile, he studies anthropology with as much conviction as knowledge.

And he will have a teacher with as much wisdom as his instinct regarding his brilliant student. He will succeed in his vocational profession, but he will have serious problems with his spirit, his desires, his dreams and his realities. And she will be accompanied by a parade of exotic, brilliant, paradoxical characters, having fun with the bright and sad anthropologist. And we will see her aged and with a point of defeat, embodied in old age by Estefanía Sandrelli, that woman who for so long embodied an unequivocally Mediterranean beauty.

The revered Gary Oldman also appears in a small role, apparently because he admires Sorrentino’s cinema so much that he wanted to appear at any cost. He does so by embodying the memorable writer John Cheever, also a dark and silent drunk, a tormented homosexual and the anthropologist’s emotional accomplice.

Sorrentino’s cinema has a powerful aesthetic. Sometimes, those dazzling images are in service of what you are narrating. It happened to me with The consequences of love y The great beauty. In other films, their excess of pretensions bothers me and a certain emptiness appears. I always remember in his films some extraordinary images, an identifiable atmosphere, but I soon forget his plots, even though he talks about characters as disturbing and dangerous as Giulio Andreotti and Silvio Berlusconi. The one I will not forget is the mermaid Celeste Dalla Porta.