We like Paolo Sorrentino, especially with a cigar in his mouth, in the
manner of a Neapolitan street urchin who grew up quickly in the slums
and the belly of Naples that marked generations of libertarian uprisings
and Camorra obsequies... however, we are not at all attracted by his
filmography, except, perhaps, The Family Friend (2005)... on the
contrary... We find it full of misplaced artistic ambitions and not even
visionary, as many have said... his most celebrated and Oscar-winning
films appear to us as colorful sideshows... something that is between a
circus show and the aesthetics of ornament dear to the "beautiful
appearance" of all power... Sorrentino, like a stylite sitting on a
column in the desert of cinema, tries to shock the audience with
figurative excesses (?!), without ever having understood that a
brilliant artist is a refined anarchist or a mangy dog who knows no
limits or measures to respect, spends his entire existence only to dance
on the heads of kings...
Of Parthenope. The most beautiful image of Parthenope is the word
interval... we are not joking... we understand well why the helpful
national and international critics have spent words of praise for this
film... to us it seems like a long commercial not even for Naples, but
for the upper middle class of Campania that together with the Camorra
has always reigned over the city... the courtiers know the art of
crawling and to keep a place in the gazebo of small red carpet
privileges, they kiss their masters' ass. Sorrentino seems to forget the
millenary culture of a city and a people who invented moments of
profound insurrectional beauty... Naples was and is the center of
popular and intellectual culture not only in Italy... expressed in
immortal songs, films of naked realism, photography of difference and
disseminated in plays, anthropological essays, futurist visions,
everlasting novels... an unrepeatable act of ethical-aesthetic creation.
Parthenope is a powerful international co-production: Fremantle, The
Apartment, Pathé, Numero 10, PiperFilm, Saint Laurent, Logical Content
Ventures, Canal+, Cine+. International distribution is Pathé, North
American distribution is A24 and Italian distribution is PiperFilm...
all people who pay attention to the substance of utilitarianism... box
office success is the film, the art of cinema has nothing to do with it.
Sorrentino's film opens in 1950... with the birth of the second daughter
of the wealthy Di Sangro family in the sea of Posillipo... she is given
the name Parthenope in honor of the city of Naples... the godfather is
Commander Achille Lauro... the one who gave a shoe to those who voted
for him in the elections for mayor and deputy of the MSI with other
right-wing coalitions... and after winning he gave the other shoe, says
Sorrentino. We move on to 1970. Parthenope is a cheeky
twenty-year-old... she makes Sandrino, the housekeeper's son, fall in
love with her, and also Raimondo, her brother, with whom she has an
almost incestuous relationship. At university she is good... she admires
the anthropology professor Devoto Marotta (who has a very troubled son
but nobody knows what it is)... a relationship of detached respect is
established between the bubbly girl and the professor. During the summer
Parthenope, Raimondo and Sandrino go on holiday to Capri... Parthenope
knows no inhibitions... an industrialist from the north tries to seduce
her with a helicopter, villas, champagne and promises of wealth... she
refuses. She proposes to her favourite writer, John Cheever, and is told
that she loves men. Raimondo goes with an heiress, and when he tries to
kiss her, he realises that he cannot love any woman except his sister.
She commits suicide by throwing herself off a cliff in Capri.
Parthenope's parents consider her guilty of her brother's death and
banish her from their lives. The wave of generational revolt of '68 had
shaken the entire world... Sorrentino doesn't take it into account... he
is silent about the cultural-political fervour that shook Naples and the
whole of Italy at least until 1977. It was about attacking power, not to
possess it, but to better destroy it.
In 1974 Parthenope asks Professor Marotta to support a thesis on the
topic of suicide... the professor suggests another topic, the cultural
impact of the miracle... she interrupts her studies and tries to become
an actress... he tries to take lessons from a faded diva, Flora Malva,
disfigured by plastic surgery who kisses her in the fumes of the
bathroom... then he sends her to Greta Cool, a declining actress of
Campanian origins (she lives in Northern Italy)... on a ship, during the
New Year's event in her honor, Cool rants against Naples and the
Neapolitans... he suggests Parthenope not to be enchanted by the
fictionality of cinema. On the same ship Parthenope meets Roberto
Criscuolo, a Camorra boss who takes her to visit the suburbs of
Naples... the girl discovers that in the city there is misery, poverty,
prostitution (?!)... she witnesses the ritual called the great fusion...
a boy and a girl, heirs of two contrasting Camorra families, make love
on a bed in front of the members of the families to conceive a child who
will mark the end of their feud. Parthenope becomes pregnant by
Criscuolo and chooses to have an abortion. Sandrino, before moving to
Milan, confirms his love for her... she blames him for her brother's
death... they will never see each other again... in the meantime Italy
falls into the years of lead (a cream sequence, you can see that
Sorrentino in those years was going mushroom hunting, perhaps)...
Parthenope graduates with top marks and Marotta takes her on as an
assistant.
We jump to 1982. Parthenope is a diligent researcher... an anthropology
magazine asks her to write an article on the liquefaction of the blood
of San Gennaro and wants to meet Cardinal Tesorone (guardian of the
ampoules of the Saint). Marotta tells her that the ecclesiastic is a
criminal. The prelate promises Parthenope to show her the treasure of
San Gennaro after the mass, where the blood of the Saint will liquefy.
The miracle does not happen because a menopausal woman screams that she
has started menstruating again... the cardinal dresses Parthenope with
jewels from the Saint's treasure and tells her that Neapolitan
spirituality is a useless machination that intertwines popular
superstition and political convenience... Parthenope lies down on a bed
and during the act of love (the cardinal never stops smoking), the blood
of San Gennaro liquefies (the Saint also participates in the cardinal's
copulation with the shameless researcher, we were missing seeing Jesus
banging the Madonna, while the angels sang the Ave Maria in chorus, and
the miracle of the blood was complete). Marotta retires and suggests
Parthenope take the competition in Trento... after winning it, do a few
years of teaching and return to Naples... he invites her to his house...
he introduces her to his son, a sort of enormous child who fills a room,
made "of water and salt, like the sea" (?!). Parthenope is fascinated by
him. It's 2023. Professor Parthenope, who remained to teach in Trento,
retires. She returns to Naples... she goes to Capri... she reflects on
her brother's death and finally feels part of the city... on the street
the fans celebrate Napoli's third championship victory and she opens up
to a smile of liberation.
Parthenope is written and directed by Sorrentino... the pompous shots,
the laughable dialogues, the bombastic scenes refer to a figurative
prosopopoeia that is at times embarrassing... both in the love scenes
and in the illustrative story of the city... Sorrentino puts everything
in there... abortion, homosexuality, lesbianism, incest, camorra,
commander Lauro... illustrated postcards resting on that slender girl
(Parthenope) who crosses the film between veils, glances, nudity that do
not penetrate the screen. Daria D'Antonio's photography spreads in a
uniform grayness and does not contemplate either the shadows or the
Mediterranean lights of Naples... Cristiano Travaglioli's editing is a
conjunction of exhausting sequences and with Lele Marchitelli's music,
they sink into a figurative minestrone with no escape... for 136
minutes... until the exhaustion of the spectator most faithful to
Sorrentine filmic factuality. Celeste Della Porta's (Young Parthenope)
acting is disconcerting... she moves through the film without having the
slightest bit of sensuality... she is neither vulgar, nor sinful, nor
shamelessly slutty (as the theme required)... she can't carry the words,
nor walk without recalling the parades of anorexic models... she wags
her tail as she can here and there... and in the close-ups she refers to
the advertisements for drugs to cure depression... she wouldn't look bad
as a lifeguard in some Turkish TV series. Luisa Ranieri (Greta Cool)
plays the wasted actress in an anecdotal way and when she gets angry
against Naples and the Neapolitans, her invectives provoke mockery. Gary
Oldman is the drunk homosexual... he doesn't break the mold... he
doesn't seem to believe in what he's playing. Isabella Ferrari covered
by a black mask, passes unnoticed from the room of memories to the
bathroom. Peppe Lanzetta impersonates the cardinal with arrogance and
the degeneration of the sacred in ostentatious sketches, to the point of
descending into parody. Alfonso Santagata (Achille Lauro) is little more
than a caricature. Except for Silvio Orlando (Professor Marotta) and
partly Stefania Sandrelli (older Parthenope), all the others are
marginal faces-bodies that have little to do with the roles assigned to
them... they seem to have come out of a designer clothes store and there
they die happy. The good monster-child, then (taken from the painting by
René Magritte, "The art of living", 1967)... is astonishing... here the
bonhomie of the monster-child is almost a martyrological evocation of an
innocent and sacred life. We have not understood if behind those
cigarettes in everyone's mouth there is some hidden sponsor and we have
not even understood if general stupidity is a virtue... what has become
clear to us is that Parthenope is a cinematic carnival that has nothing
to do with the resurrection of a thought, a style, an art form... but an
elevation of deception, conventions, lies, scams that keep the society
of the spectacle afloat. Praise be now to men of fame.
http://sicilialibertaria.it
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
manner of a Neapolitan street urchin who grew up quickly in the slums
and the belly of Naples that marked generations of libertarian uprisings
and Camorra obsequies... however, we are not at all attracted by his
filmography, except, perhaps, The Family Friend (2005)... on the
contrary... We find it full of misplaced artistic ambitions and not even
visionary, as many have said... his most celebrated and Oscar-winning
films appear to us as colorful sideshows... something that is between a
circus show and the aesthetics of ornament dear to the "beautiful
appearance" of all power... Sorrentino, like a stylite sitting on a
column in the desert of cinema, tries to shock the audience with
figurative excesses (?!), without ever having understood that a
brilliant artist is a refined anarchist or a mangy dog who knows no
limits or measures to respect, spends his entire existence only to dance
on the heads of kings...
Of Parthenope. The most beautiful image of Parthenope is the word
interval... we are not joking... we understand well why the helpful
national and international critics have spent words of praise for this
film... to us it seems like a long commercial not even for Naples, but
for the upper middle class of Campania that together with the Camorra
has always reigned over the city... the courtiers know the art of
crawling and to keep a place in the gazebo of small red carpet
privileges, they kiss their masters' ass. Sorrentino seems to forget the
millenary culture of a city and a people who invented moments of
profound insurrectional beauty... Naples was and is the center of
popular and intellectual culture not only in Italy... expressed in
immortal songs, films of naked realism, photography of difference and
disseminated in plays, anthropological essays, futurist visions,
everlasting novels... an unrepeatable act of ethical-aesthetic creation.
Parthenope is a powerful international co-production: Fremantle, The
Apartment, Pathé, Numero 10, PiperFilm, Saint Laurent, Logical Content
Ventures, Canal+, Cine+. International distribution is Pathé, North
American distribution is A24 and Italian distribution is PiperFilm...
all people who pay attention to the substance of utilitarianism... box
office success is the film, the art of cinema has nothing to do with it.
Sorrentino's film opens in 1950... with the birth of the second daughter
of the wealthy Di Sangro family in the sea of Posillipo... she is given
the name Parthenope in honor of the city of Naples... the godfather is
Commander Achille Lauro... the one who gave a shoe to those who voted
for him in the elections for mayor and deputy of the MSI with other
right-wing coalitions... and after winning he gave the other shoe, says
Sorrentino. We move on to 1970. Parthenope is a cheeky
twenty-year-old... she makes Sandrino, the housekeeper's son, fall in
love with her, and also Raimondo, her brother, with whom she has an
almost incestuous relationship. At university she is good... she admires
the anthropology professor Devoto Marotta (who has a very troubled son
but nobody knows what it is)... a relationship of detached respect is
established between the bubbly girl and the professor. During the summer
Parthenope, Raimondo and Sandrino go on holiday to Capri... Parthenope
knows no inhibitions... an industrialist from the north tries to seduce
her with a helicopter, villas, champagne and promises of wealth... she
refuses. She proposes to her favourite writer, John Cheever, and is told
that she loves men. Raimondo goes with an heiress, and when he tries to
kiss her, he realises that he cannot love any woman except his sister.
She commits suicide by throwing herself off a cliff in Capri.
Parthenope's parents consider her guilty of her brother's death and
banish her from their lives. The wave of generational revolt of '68 had
shaken the entire world... Sorrentino doesn't take it into account... he
is silent about the cultural-political fervour that shook Naples and the
whole of Italy at least until 1977. It was about attacking power, not to
possess it, but to better destroy it.
In 1974 Parthenope asks Professor Marotta to support a thesis on the
topic of suicide... the professor suggests another topic, the cultural
impact of the miracle... she interrupts her studies and tries to become
an actress... he tries to take lessons from a faded diva, Flora Malva,
disfigured by plastic surgery who kisses her in the fumes of the
bathroom... then he sends her to Greta Cool, a declining actress of
Campanian origins (she lives in Northern Italy)... on a ship, during the
New Year's event in her honor, Cool rants against Naples and the
Neapolitans... he suggests Parthenope not to be enchanted by the
fictionality of cinema. On the same ship Parthenope meets Roberto
Criscuolo, a Camorra boss who takes her to visit the suburbs of
Naples... the girl discovers that in the city there is misery, poverty,
prostitution (?!)... she witnesses the ritual called the great fusion...
a boy and a girl, heirs of two contrasting Camorra families, make love
on a bed in front of the members of the families to conceive a child who
will mark the end of their feud. Parthenope becomes pregnant by
Criscuolo and chooses to have an abortion. Sandrino, before moving to
Milan, confirms his love for her... she blames him for her brother's
death... they will never see each other again... in the meantime Italy
falls into the years of lead (a cream sequence, you can see that
Sorrentino in those years was going mushroom hunting, perhaps)...
Parthenope graduates with top marks and Marotta takes her on as an
assistant.
We jump to 1982. Parthenope is a diligent researcher... an anthropology
magazine asks her to write an article on the liquefaction of the blood
of San Gennaro and wants to meet Cardinal Tesorone (guardian of the
ampoules of the Saint). Marotta tells her that the ecclesiastic is a
criminal. The prelate promises Parthenope to show her the treasure of
San Gennaro after the mass, where the blood of the Saint will liquefy.
The miracle does not happen because a menopausal woman screams that she
has started menstruating again... the cardinal dresses Parthenope with
jewels from the Saint's treasure and tells her that Neapolitan
spirituality is a useless machination that intertwines popular
superstition and political convenience... Parthenope lies down on a bed
and during the act of love (the cardinal never stops smoking), the blood
of San Gennaro liquefies (the Saint also participates in the cardinal's
copulation with the shameless researcher, we were missing seeing Jesus
banging the Madonna, while the angels sang the Ave Maria in chorus, and
the miracle of the blood was complete). Marotta retires and suggests
Parthenope take the competition in Trento... after winning it, do a few
years of teaching and return to Naples... he invites her to his house...
he introduces her to his son, a sort of enormous child who fills a room,
made "of water and salt, like the sea" (?!). Parthenope is fascinated by
him. It's 2023. Professor Parthenope, who remained to teach in Trento,
retires. She returns to Naples... she goes to Capri... she reflects on
her brother's death and finally feels part of the city... on the street
the fans celebrate Napoli's third championship victory and she opens up
to a smile of liberation.
Parthenope is written and directed by Sorrentino... the pompous shots,
the laughable dialogues, the bombastic scenes refer to a figurative
prosopopoeia that is at times embarrassing... both in the love scenes
and in the illustrative story of the city... Sorrentino puts everything
in there... abortion, homosexuality, lesbianism, incest, camorra,
commander Lauro... illustrated postcards resting on that slender girl
(Parthenope) who crosses the film between veils, glances, nudity that do
not penetrate the screen. Daria D'Antonio's photography spreads in a
uniform grayness and does not contemplate either the shadows or the
Mediterranean lights of Naples... Cristiano Travaglioli's editing is a
conjunction of exhausting sequences and with Lele Marchitelli's music,
they sink into a figurative minestrone with no escape... for 136
minutes... until the exhaustion of the spectator most faithful to
Sorrentine filmic factuality. Celeste Della Porta's (Young Parthenope)
acting is disconcerting... she moves through the film without having the
slightest bit of sensuality... she is neither vulgar, nor sinful, nor
shamelessly slutty (as the theme required)... she can't carry the words,
nor walk without recalling the parades of anorexic models... she wags
her tail as she can here and there... and in the close-ups she refers to
the advertisements for drugs to cure depression... she wouldn't look bad
as a lifeguard in some Turkish TV series. Luisa Ranieri (Greta Cool)
plays the wasted actress in an anecdotal way and when she gets angry
against Naples and the Neapolitans, her invectives provoke mockery. Gary
Oldman is the drunk homosexual... he doesn't break the mold... he
doesn't seem to believe in what he's playing. Isabella Ferrari covered
by a black mask, passes unnoticed from the room of memories to the
bathroom. Peppe Lanzetta impersonates the cardinal with arrogance and
the degeneration of the sacred in ostentatious sketches, to the point of
descending into parody. Alfonso Santagata (Achille Lauro) is little more
than a caricature. Except for Silvio Orlando (Professor Marotta) and
partly Stefania Sandrelli (older Parthenope), all the others are
marginal faces-bodies that have little to do with the roles assigned to
them... they seem to have come out of a designer clothes store and there
they die happy. The good monster-child, then (taken from the painting by
René Magritte, "The art of living", 1967)... is astonishing... here the
bonhomie of the monster-child is almost a martyrological evocation of an
innocent and sacred life. We have not understood if behind those
cigarettes in everyone's mouth there is some hidden sponsor and we have
not even understood if general stupidity is a virtue... what has become
clear to us is that Parthenope is a cinematic carnival that has nothing
to do with the resurrection of a thought, a style, an art form... but an
elevation of deception, conventions, lies, scams that keep the society
of the spectacle afloat. Praise be now to men of fame.
http://sicilialibertaria.it
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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