Paolo Sorrentino returns to the red carpet with a film of celestial beauty about the passing of time, Naples as a gift

The Italian director’s latest film, competing in the Official Competition, was presented Tuesday evening at the Cannes Film Festival. A film received with enthusiasm by the public.

1950. A little girl is born in the sea, at the foot of the family palace. She is named Parthenope, like the Greek mermaid, whose legend is closely linked to the city of Naples. In his room, a carriage awaits him, brought from Versailles by his godfather to serve as his bed.

Parthenope becomes a beautiful young girl (Celeste Dalla Porta), who arouses the desire of everyone, including that of her older brother Raimondo. Sandrino, the childhood friend, has always been madly in love with Parthenope, who lets himself be loved. A moment during which she lets herself be distracted from this brother who everyone agrees to describe as “fragile”. Until the tragedy.

The director of The Great Bellezza, Oscar for best foreign film in 2014, is a regular at the Cannes Film Festival. With Parthenope its tenth feature film presented Tuesday May 21 on the Croisette, it is for the seventh time in official competition, without ever having won the Palme.

Paolo Sarrentino’s latest film offers a reflection on youth, this period made of desires and confusion, and on this time which passes, and which will not return.“It is the great epic story of youth, with its desires, this life full of dreams and promises”, the director confided to franceinfo on Tuesday a few hours before the official presentation of the film.

Once time has passed, the time of disillusionment has arrived, Parthenope concentrates on her studies, and on her thirst for knowledge, which are embodied by the old and desperate writer John Cheever, played by Gary Oldman, and by her professor. university, with whom she forms an almost filial relationship, sharing a secret pain.

Parthenope ends up leaving Naples. We find her again many years later, this time played by the wonderful Italian actress Stefania Sandrelli. She retired, and she is returning to Naples. We leave the film with the image of this old lady dancing from one foot to the other, an ice cream in her hand, amazed like a child at the spectacle of a ship truck carrying the jubilation of a group of football supporters . “For me, the miracle is continuing to marvel. The older you get, the more difficult and rare it is, so when it happens, it really becomes a miracle.”told the director to franceinfo Culture.

The director films Naples seen from the sea, like an inaccessible city, its inhabitants like extras with perfect plasticity, which we see in traveling shots in striking slow motion. As if life outside the microcosm of Parthenope had stopped.

The great Italian director, known for his rhythmic productions like music videos, and his feature films often imbued with irony about his country and its politics, here offers a much more contemplative, almost metaphysical film.

In a perfectly orchestrated production, where each shot is worked like an animated painting, Paolo Sorrentino invites us to observe very closely the effects of the passing of time, with a staging which focuses entirely on the subject, relegating everything else, everything the context, in the blur, even off-camera.

“I see beauty everywhere. Everywhere and in everything, all the time, that’s my problem,” Paolo Sorrentino told franceinfo Culture.

“What is anthropology?” This question of Parthenope chants the film. “Anthropology is seeing, when everything else is lacking”will eventually let go of the old professor. “Billy Wilder was an anthropologist”, the facetious professor had declared earlier as a hint, slipping in the idea that cinema might be a form of anthropology.

Completely disconnected from the contemporary world, like a bubble in orbit of conflicts and movements that are shaking the planet, the latest film by the Italian filmmaker offers, in a Cannes selection otherwise very inhabited by current political and societal questions, a parenthesis of beauty and almost metaphysical, totally purified reflection on the human condition.

Gender : Drama
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Actors: Celeste Dalla Porta, Stefania Sandrelli, Gary Oldman
Country : Italy
Duration : 2h16 min
Exit : 2024
Distributer : Pathé
Synopsis : The life of Parthenope from her birth in the 1950s to the present day. A feminine epic devoid of heroism but in love with freedom, Naples, and love. The true, unspeakable or short-lived loves that condemn you to pain but make you start again. The perfect summer in Capri for a carefree youth despite a hopeless horizon. Around Parthenope, the Neapolitans. Scrutinized, loved, disillusioned and full of life, who we follow in their melancholic drifts, their tragic ironies and their moments of discouragement. Life can be very long, memorable or ordinary. The passage of time offers the entire repertoire of feelings. And there, in the background, near and far, this indefinable city, Naples, which bewitches, enchants, screams, laughs and can hurt us.