“Parthenope”, the track of the sirens of the filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino | EUROtoday

On Mar 12, 2025

Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.

UBirth within the flows of the Mediterranean solar, a carriage remodeled right into a mattress, the blood of San Gennaro which disfigures below the warmth of sacro-saints caresses, the ghost of John Cheever, the writer of Swimmer, Confit in alcohol and iodized air of Capri, the our bodies captured of their grace, paganism and intertwined Christianity, reminiscent of tragic and comedian. Life is a extra bitter however extra thrilling cocktail than a easy Spritz …

Paolo Sorrentino, who had captivated us with La Grande Bellezza, Oscar for one of the best movie in a overseas language 2014, is again on the high of the baroque and the subtle sensation with Parthenope,, Drinked programs of a blessed child by the gods of Neapolitan shores, from the Nineteen Fifties to the current day.

It is she, Parthenope, etymologically “the one who has a young girl’s face”, namesake of the siren who grew to become the incarnation of Naples after having failed. The filmmaker resuscitates her in his personal method, with extra and poetry, sense of the chic and the grotesque, in excellent settlement along with his hometown, of which this movie can also be the masterful portrait: Naples, it’s each the thriller and the key of Polichinelle.

“A modern epic”

Cigarillo lips, hair in battle, ring within the ear, the 55 -year -old filmmaker evokes his new movie as “a modern epic in the footsteps of an unpredictable heroine who never renounces her freedom, even if it means finding himself alone”. Parthenope is thus in the precise of La Grande Bellezza, impressed by the identical e-book, Injured to dying(Ferito died), From the author Raffaele La Capria, which describes the Neapolitans slowed down of their ancestral codes and the existential vacancy.

Does Sorrentino suppose? A person of photos, this silent sculpts characters who converse for him, like this Napolitan diva, Greta Cool, who, in a scene as hilarious as severe, on the bridge of a liner the place we rented her for the night, harangues his dumbfounded compatriots: “You pride yourself in malignant beings,” she is screaming, ” Poor, whining, cowards, arrears. »»

Read too Paolo Sorrentino: “Naples is a good theater”Further on, a character will say that discovering Naples is to kiss a beautiful mouth before realizing that she has no teeth … If there is a caricature, she is not exaggerated for the filmmaker, who lives with her city “a passionate, conflicting, exasperating relationship, between fascination and rejection” and continues to define it “as remoted from the world, full of contradictions, love, hate and intolerance”.

“The concept of Parthenope,” he said, however, came to me when I was asked about what was sacred for me. I replied: “The sacred is what we won’t neglect in our biography.” “For him,” the sea of Naples, a first love, our parents, a salt dawn … “But, in Naples, the sacred by no means goes out with out his confederate, the miraculous, all the time suspicious however residing, in” a city where the religious and the profane go hand in hand, like people fascinated by the miracle of the blood of San Gennaro, which they see it as a thing,

The soul and contradictions of Naples

It must be said that there are beautiful in this city which breathes “the scent of useless loves” and where coupling is celebrated on a bed of two teens of mafia clans under the eyes of their parents, anxious to ensure their future by sealing it in the flesh. Parthenope attends the show, but does it really exist, as things seem to slide on her, who walks the shallows in fur dress, so distant in front of the world around her, a goddess hovering over mortals too predictable, too allegorical?

Read too “Mickey 17”: the anti-top load of the director of “Parasite”Adonis delivered to the delicacies and dizziness of Capri, a teacher of anthropology at the air of Umberto Eco, a priest who dyes his hair and will make Park His holy, an old shipowner who loves life, a fragile brother who no longer loves him, a young tuxedo sponsor who gives the poor his gold watch.

Who is really Parthenope? “We shouldn’t see it solely as an allegory,” retorts Sorrentino. He is a living, complex character, with contradictory aspects that make her mysterious, fascinating. It represents, of course, the soul and the contradictions of Naples, like the other characters who are part of this nonchalant city, a follower of the carelessness (Lascia Andare). They project their fantasies, their desires on Parthenope, who is constantly looking for each other, hesitates for a moment between her anthropology studies and the career as an actress. »»

Melancholy, the “model” Sorrentino

This atmospheric portrait of a city and a woman, Sorrentino accompanies it with sublime images of the bay of Naples and sophisticated plans inside the palaces where her heroine passes, like time. Some found that Parthè, Played by Celeste Dalla Porta, was too beautiful, filmed too close, too naked, accusing Sorrentino of favoring aesthetics to the detriment of politics.

“I take advantage of the cinema to inform the world as I would love it to be,” he replies. “And I would like him to be stunning. It is idealized, poetic, undoubtedly extreme, too aesthetic for some however it’s pure for me. »»

Read too Sean Baker: “Mikey Madison has audacity, humor and sexy side of the character”The feelings are there, nevertheless, contagious, between Parthenope and the previous instructor of anthropology, who will outline his younger pupil his self-discipline in these phrases: “Seeing when you have lost everything, love and desire. This way of “seeing” is the thread that connects them, makes them recognize themselves. In suffering and empathy: he with his sick son, “product of water and salt”, she with her deceased brother whom she is desperately seeking to resuscitate during her meetings.

Hence their melancholy, the “model” Sorrentino. “It’s true,” he admits. It is a feeling that I have in me since my childhood and that I probably transmit to my characters. He will not explain the cause.

Love as a means of survival

Over Parthenope, Sorrentino’s enchanting cinema (which has never borne its name so well, Sorrente is the city of sirens, Nomen is Omen…) Leave open doors, ask questions unanswered, or rather answers with images full of sensuality: the sea and the sun are the only certainties in this air of indolence, mystery, stirred by a vintage soundtrack where Ligeti, the love canzons of Marino Marini and the My Way de Sinatra.

Read too The most anticipated films of 2025Is the story full of holes? It is up to us to mend the Tapestry with Parthenope. It is enough to be carried and to believe as Parthenope that “love is a method of survival”, without knowing too much if it has failed or successful.

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

“Myself, loose Sorrentino, I do not know if love saved or damned to me …” In any case, it permits him to supply a movie of luminous magnificence, to the final plan, nocturnal, on the face of a 73-year-old girl who has aged however who nonetheless smiles, her suitcase at arm’s size, on the passage of the Napoli tifosi. It was Thursday, May 4, 2023. Naples was champion of Italy. A miracle. And undoubtedly the sacred.

“Parthenope” ✭✭✭✭
From the Nineteen Fifties to the current day, Paolo Sorrentino paints a portrait faraway from some incarnations of Naples and a mysterious girl within the identify of Siren, Parthenope. During chic photos of Capri and Naples bay, he indicators a protracted melancholy poem on love, the fragility of life, the sacred and the pagan. A movie carried by distinctive actors: Celeste Dalla carried in disillusioned heroine, her older double, Stefania Sandrelli, and Gary Oldman as an excellent American author in his drift.
Drama of Paolo Sorrentino (Italy, 2024), 2h 16, with Celeste Dalla Porta, Stefania Sandrelli, Gary Oldman … indoors on March 12.
The stars of Point : ✩✩✩✩✩: null; ✭: dangerous; ✭✭: Middle; ✭✭✭: Good; ✭✭✭✭: Excellent; ✭✭✭✭✭: Exceptional.

https://www.lepoint.fr/culture/parthenope-le-chant-des-sirenes-du-cineaste-paolo-sorrentino-11-03-2025-2584466_3.php