A cinematic Valentine to beauty, beautiful people, Italy and especially Naples, “Parthenope” reflects Paolo Sorrentino’s obsessions.
We meet a strikingly handsome young woman (Celeste Dalla Porta), a teenager. Her name Parthenope is that of the ancient siren who according to legend created the sunstruck port city of Naples. She is so stunning, people literally stop and stare.
Italy’s Sorrentino, as producer, writer, director, takes this gaze and follows her quests for work, for love, for meaning as years go by.
“I was taken by the theme of time. And how it changes us as people,” Italy’s Oscar winning (“The Great Beauty,” 2013) auteur said in a Zoom interview from Rome, smoking a stogie as a translator spoke on another screen.
“We remember some things, sometimes we forget. As we live these long, long lives there’s also something very heroic living through the passage of time and memories.
“The film is very simple. It has to do with remembering, with this woman, the way it functions in a kind of extravagant style. A vagabond style, you could say. Memories can be extremely detailed and realistic and precise.
“Sometimes they can be very vague. This is what is represented in the character of Parthenope who is remembering her life.”
At 54, this Neapolitan has enjoyed a remarkable, sustained international success. His boldly visual style, similar to Federico Fellini, transports, exaggerates and shocks.
Sorrentino is best known films for “Il Divo,” the autobiographical “The Hand of God” (2021), an Oscar nominee, and HBO’s “The Young Pope” (2016) with Jude Law.
As to why Parthenope (pronounced Parth-Ah-No-Pay), “I just like the image of the siren emerging from the water. Someone who was born in the water. So this woman has the same name as the siren. But the analogy really ends there.”
His heroine’s life is a search for work that shows her intelligence and balances her beauty. A search that is the film’s driving force.
“I think the search for love, the expectation of love, the disappointment of love — this is something we all have in common,” Sorrentino said. “All of us have built our lives in a certain sense around the absence of love.
“I wanted to give this three-dimensional portrait of a woman and her relationship to love. Yes.”
Does his ability to score beyond Italy’s borders make finding his next subject difficult?
“It’s very hard to explain. It’s one of the mysteries of our work. Ideas come to us. We don’t know from where, we don’t know how.
“I’ve always found film a wonderful game. The good part is the playfulness. All the rest is something I don’t pay attention to. It doesn’t interest me.”
“Parthenope” is in theaters