Andrea Pirrello
MOVIE REVIEW
La grazia (2025)
Paolo Sorrentino’s latest and this year’s Venice International Film Festival opener, “La grazia,” is the antithesis of “Il divo” and “Loro,” his previous features centering on political leaders, despite it also starring his go-to leading man, Toni Servillo, who played Giulio Andreotti and Silvio Berlusconi, respectively, in the previous films.
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MOVIE REVIEW
The Great Beauty (2013)
Gianni Fiorito/Pathé Distribution
When Peter Greenaway gazed at Rome back in 1987 for “The Belly of an Architect,” he pointed his near-stationary camera towards it from a distance, until the static accumulating from this God’s-eye view nearly caused the screen to bow outward at the sides. Paolo Sorrentino does things differently, and “The Great Beauty” hews close to the affluent end of the Eternal City’s citizenry and shares their perspectives instead. Mr. Sorrentino is interested in the effect that people have on their city rather than the reverse process, and his Rome is built on networks of vaguely mournful parties and nightclubs and middle-aged hedonists; a seemingly fragile base for so much history to find itself standing on. The resident Lord of Misrule Silvio Berlusconi never actually turns up, but lurks around every corner.
MOVIE REVIEW
This Must Be the Place (2011)
Trinity
On paper, “This Must be the Place” is an intriguing proposition: This Italian-French-Irish co-production marks the English-language debut of Neapolitan director Paolo Sorrentino, utilizes eclectic filming locations — including Dublin, New York and New Mexico — and stars two of the finest actors working today — Sean Penn and Frances McDormand. It’s a crushing shame therefore that this cosmopolitan picture is such a muddled disappointment.
MOVIE REVIEW
Il divo (2008)
Music Box Films
Italian politics, prone to looking like a nest of vipers to an outside observer, receives the full weight of Paolo Sorrentino's cinematic imagination in "Il divo." Presenting the inner workings of the country's Christian Democrats through an operatic whirlpool of cross-cutting, flamboyant set-pieces, audacious musical choices and the odd surreal interjection, Mr. Sorrentino has crafted a film feverish enough to do the subject justice.
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