DRAMA; 2hr 16min (Italian with subtitles, English)
STARRING: Celeste Dalla Porta, Silvio Orlando, Gary Oldman
Water babe: Dalla Porta
Born in 1950 in an ocean water birth and named after the mythical temptress of her quixotic home city of Naples, Parthenope (Dalla Porta) joins a family for whom the ease of wealth is an afterthought. The baby seems destined for a future as gilded as the carriage bed in which she sleeps: not only does she grow into a swan-necked, lushly chiselled stunner, but “Parthé” is further blessed with a serious brain, electing in 1968 to study anthropology, at which she excels despite prettily professing not to understand exactly what it is.
Her beauty, as Oldman’s dissolute and teary writer, John Cheever, aptly observes over a million drinks, “opens doors.” For her part, Parthenope is in no hurry to open anything, drifting in a miasma of privilege that would be unbearable to behold if writer-director Paolo Sorrentino’s “feminine epic”weren’t so visually tasty.
Sorrentino (Youth, The Great Beauty) isn’t everyone’s sybaritic overload: his movies can feel like the equivalent of a sofa that swallows you whole. Whether Parthenope is chilling with champagne and cigs, agonising over her brother’s suicide or romancing peacockish Neapolitan comers, both the director’s languid pacing and his star’s unreadable attitude remain unchanged.
By 1975, having graduated with honours, Parthé has set her roving sights on an academic career, although her actual, ongoing project is the business of being her enigmatic self. Men — her revered anthropology professor (Orlando) excepted — are inclined to come and go. Their lust object sails serenely on, ticking knockout boxes at every age and stage. Just don’t scratch her surface for signs of inner life.
