A highly watchable, provocative celebration of life, death, morality and, above all, beauty.
Paolo Sorrentino has his finger on the visual pulse of Naples in Parthenope.
Birthed in the cool blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, Parthenope was born into grandeur, her baby bed crafted from an elaborate stagecoach once belonging to the Palace of Versailles. As a young woman, she is as beautiful as her two namesakes: the Greek siren who drowned herself after failing to capture Ulysses attention, and the Italian city of Naples. So stunning that she causes a commotion wherever she goes, one would think she’d tire of the second glances and become angry with each gawp, but the men and women who turn toward her make her smile, and suddenly she’s even more attractive than she was moments earlier. In full power of her sexuality, Parthenope, in the prime of her life, is utterly unfettered.
As a woman in her seventies looking back at her youth, sex, for Parthenope, drove her narrative. Boldly mixing with family, religion and country, eroticism does not so much suggest that nothing is sacred (actually the film might suggest one’s intelligence might be), but that nothing is immune to an exquisite human form. Celeste Dalla Porta is commandingly dreamy as the object of desire, walking through her scenes as if she’s a model in an expensive cosmetics commercial: flawless, healthy and flirty. Her clothes say much about her character; designed by Saint Laurent, they are uncompromisingly sexy. And the oglers – the film’s dozens of extras – are obvious props, their exaggerated actions intentionally staged. There’s an unsubtle Fellini effect to it all, ensuring an intensely visual, almost surreal experience.
No doubt about it, Parthenope is arthouse, with unrealistically careful dialogue – ‘Do you smell the scent of dead loves?’ – and Gary Oldman starring as the alcoholic fiction writer John Cheever. Everything is pushed too far, which is, the film would imply, as it should be.
With the award-winning Italian dream team of director Paolo Sorrentino and cinematographer Daria D’Antonio (together in The Hand of God) there’s a lush and epic quality to each and every scene, certifying Naples itself is as seductive as the titular character, full of natural and architectural opulence. As a love letter to the city, there’s no getting around nostalgia, only this nostalgia reeks of sunbathing and cigarettes, jewels, silk, art, wit and threesomes. The film is a horny, optical, visceral pleasure, and I think it’s safe to say that nothing else released on Boxing Day will stir your senses quite like this.
Reviewed by Heather Taylor Johnson
Parthenope releases on Boxing Day.
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