|
Paolo Sorrentino (Italy, 1970),
orphan of both his parents since the age of 16,
debuted with the short films Un Paradiso (1994) and Love Has No Bounds (1998).
His first feature-length film, L'Uomo in Piu` / One Man Up (2001), is a parable of moral and financial decline set in the 1980s.
Le Conseguenze dell'Amore/ The Consequences of Love (2004) is the portrait of an introverted and melancholy middle-aged man who doesn't have love.
At the beginning he defends his monotonous but quiet life, and later he sacrifices it for the silliest of reasons, convinced that he will never get the love that would have rescued it.
An existential meditation on life, death and love,
this film introduces Sorrentino's elliptical narrative style, helped by
Luca Bigazzi's elegant cinematography.
A middle-aged man, Titta, is sitting in a hotel's elegant cafe' and having melancholy thoughts about his pointless life. He observes a female bartender serving drinks to an old man surrounded by girls, and a horse-driven hearse that rides by in front of the hotel. He plays chess by himself. A businessman from Mexico tries to make conversation but Titta is asocial and the conversation dies.
He claims to be working for a financial firm, but the Mexican easily proves that it is a lie. Titta has dinner with an elderly couple, who call him "doctor", and looks indifferent to them. He plays cards with them. We learn that the old man, Carlo, was a gambler and lost everything, and now he and his wife Isabella live as guests in the hotel that they used to own. Titta is an insomniac.
Titta has lived in that hotel for eight years and nobody knows what Titta does.
We hear his stream of consciousness. He leads a monotonous life. He never betrays an emotion, never smiles, he always has the same cold, impenetrable, enigmatic look. In his hotel room he inject heroin in his arm
but only once a week. He has been doing so for 24 years.
Every now and then he pays for the expensive procedure to clean his entire blood system.
He phones home and speaks with his wife and his children, who don't appreciate his phone calls.
He eavesdrops on his neighbors, Carlo and Isabella, two pathetic aristocrats who lost everything.
He smokes a lot.
One day he grabs his suitcase and drives to a bank where he delivers the suitcase: it is full of money. He insists that money be counted by humans, not by machines.
He often stares at the hotel's bartender and waitress, Sofia, especially when she leaves with a boyfriend, always a different one, and she stares back, but he never responds to
her "goodbye" when she walks out. One evening he confronts him and asks why but he simply walks away.
His younger stepbrother comes to visit and mentions that he is about to leave the country for a new job. He manages to cause a strong emotion in Titta when he
reminds him of their neighbor Dino, who has accepted a
crazy job fixing telephone lines on the mountains: Titta calls him his
best friend even though they haven't seen each other in 20 years.
One day two Sicilian gangsters show up at his hotel room, and we understand
that he is affiliated with the mafia.
We see them carry out two assassinations.
While the gangsters are in his hotel room, a lady delivers a suitcase.
Later he delivers it to the bank and waits for the employees to count the money.
This time a large sum is missing. Titta, who clearly pocketed the money, pretends to be outraged and demands that his account be closed. We hear his stream of consciousness: he is bluffing. The bank's director falls for it and accepts that the bank will add the money that is missing.
One day he finally chats with Sofia, and she explains that the young men who
pick her at closing time are not boyfriends but driving instructors.
They start spending time together. One day he buys an expensive car as
a gift for her, using the money he stole from the suitcase.
Sofia refuses the gift that would imply he is buying her.
He leaves the keys on the car's hood.
Sofia visits him in his room because she wants to know him better.
He quickly tells her that he was a high-level
financial broker, that he invested and lost a huge amount of money belonging to the mafia, that the mafia locked him in that hotel,
that every week he launders a suitcase full of money to the bank on behalf of the mafia,
that he has been divorced for ten years, and it's the
eve of his 50th birthday. He then lies down, tired.
Sofia promises to celebrate his birthday. She takes the car after all.
As Sofia leaves his room, the mysterious lady delivers a suitcase.
Minutes later the Sicilian gangsters appear and steal the suitcase.
He calls his mafia contact, Pippo, and tells him what happened.
Pippo is incredulous. He tells Titta to come immediately and clarify things
with Nitto. But Titta has the appointment with Sofia to celebrate his birthday and refuses. He waits in vain for Sofia: an inexperienced driver, she crashed the car and is seriously injured.
Titta also breaks ties with Carlo and Isabella: it turns out that Titta has been losing at cards with Carlo as a sort of charity, knowing all the time that Carlo was cheating, and at last he finally and rudely unmasks and humiliates him.
Titta, convinced that nobody loves him, then heads to the appointment with Pippo. They haven't seen each other in 15 years.
Pippo takes him to a hotel and for the first time Titta smiles (at his ironic situation).
The mafia boss Nitto interrogates Titta about the disappearance of the suitcase.
And so we learn that Titta actually got the suitcase back.
Nitto then asks why Titta didn't simply deliver the suitcase to the bank,
and Titta surprises him with his answer: he has decided not to return the
suitcase.
They kill Pippo as an example for Titta.
As he is transported by car, we see in a flashback how Titta disabled the elevator of the hotel and was therefore able to get to the car before them. He shot them dead and retrieved the suitcase.
We see this flashback while Titta is taken to a construction site and
lifted by a crane over a crate of concrete. They will spare his life if he
tells them where the suitcase is. He doesn't talk and drowns in the concrete.
We see in a flashback that he has gifted the suitcase full of money to Carlo and Isabella, who are broke and live of memories.
Titta dies and we hear his last thought: it's about his
best friend Dino, the only person who loves him, or so he hopes, who works
far away fixing electrical poles.
L'Amico di Famiglia/ The Family Friend (2006) offers a terrific portrait of a greedy amoral nihilist, somewhere between Dickens's Huriah Heep and Moliere's "Miser", but with an existential twist. This film is where the elliptic style and the existential spleen come together to complement each other.
The whole film emanates a sense of moral and physical decay.
Key scenes are barely sketched for a few seconds, basically an extension of the art of painting. Sometimes, like at the beginning, they create a jarring and dissonant sequence that only later starts making sense but, pointedly, never achieves harmony.
There are loose threads. Notably we are never told the reason for the cast on the loan shark. But the truly annoying feature of the film is the song that opens and closes, Antony and the Johnsons' "Am a Bird Now".
The film opens with the image of a nun buried up to her neck in the sand.
Two men are staring at her.
We then see a young woman get off a long-distance bus.
We then see a cowboy at a ranch that looks like Texas.
We see young women playing volleyball, and a licentious eye staring at them.
We then see the middle-aged Saverio and his wife, who are struggling to find the money to pay for their daughter's wedding.
We are finally introduced to Geremia, a middle-aged man who lives alone with his
bed-stricken mother in a squalid apartment.
He is ugly, almost a midget, almost a hunchback, with a cast on his arm, who is always running and carries a plastic bag instead of a purse.
We learn from his mother that he smells bed.
He meets a professional matchmaker who is looking for a wife for her: the woman
who got off the bus, a Romanian woman who doesn't speak Italian.
Geremia takes her to see his apartment. She is not impressed.
Geremia runs a tailor shop with a few employees, but he is mainly known as
a money lender. He claims to do it as a service to the community but it soon
appears that he is a sneaky loan shark.
We first see him dealing with a woman, Tiziana, who needs money for cosmetic
surgery, and then a couple who are expecting a baby.
Geremia is sweet and cordial with everybody. But then he visits his friend Gino, who wears a cowboy outfit,
and tells him to investigate Tiziana. We understand that Gino works for Geremia
as a private detective of sorts.
Geremia knows everything of his customers. Obviously Geremia doesn't lend money to people before he learned enough about their lives to trust them.
Back home, Geremia's mother tells him that a nun delivered something of value (perhaps the nun that had been buried at the beach). And she mentions that
everybody steals and everybody is unhappy.
Geremia's friend Gino attends an open-air pageant won by the sexy Rosalba, Saverio's daughter, who performs an elegant dance on stage.
We see that someone explains to Saverio the terms under which Geremia lends money.
We see the couple pay their debt to Geremia with their wedding rings and the newborn's gold baptism chain. Geremia is escorted by two thugs.
Later, the young attractive wife meets Geremia alone because they still need money. Geremia clearly takes sex as a form of payment and likes young women.
Geremia visits Gino at his ranch, where he enjoys the life of a Texan cowboy.
His dream is to move to the USA.
Gino delivers information about Tiziana, who can be trusted with a loan.
When Gino asks him if they are friends, Geremia replies that he never thought about this.
An old woman approaches Geremia for a loan to cure a disease that is killing her.
She shows up with her grandchild. Geremia refuses to give the child a chocolate cookie and then eats one himself. That's how stingy he is.
The old woman cries and Geremia accepts to give her money right away.
Geremia visits Saverio, pretending that he's just coming to get acquainted.
He sees little in the house that can cover the debt, but then he sees their
daughter, the most beautiful woman in town, who doesn't know Geremia's job.
She's the one who is getting married. Suddenly, Geremia is interested.
A man, Tesauro, approaches Geremia to purchase aristocratic titles, but Geremia is not interested, especially after Tesauro mentions God.
We then see that the grandmother is spending the load to play bingo.
Gino is standing in front of her and explains to her in a threatening tone that she now belongs to Geremia.
Geremia interferes in the preparation of Rosalba's wedding to the point of
upsetting Rosalba, who is clearly a spoiled and impertinent.
Later, Saverio explains to his daughter Rosalba that they don't have money to pay for her wedding reception, that Geremia is a loan shark, that he is determined to pay for a large wedding because he's been humiliated all his life, even though Rosalba doesn't want it and resents the whole idea.
At home Geremia lives a boring life with his mother. From their conversation
we learn that Geremia's father lives in Rome, works in the same business of lending money but on a bigger scale, and has abandoned Geremia.
We then see the grandmother buried in the sand at the beach and Geremia's thug threatening to kill her.
The day of Rosalba's wedding Saverio and his wife are grateful to Geremia.
Geremia is left a few minutes alone with Rosalba, who is already wearing the
wedding dress, and touches her. Rosalba lets him do it. She bargains a new price for her father's debt and then has sex with him.
She then walks to the altar in tears.
Gino tells Geremia that the granma's son refuses to pay her debt, and Gino coldly instructs him to kill her. Gino is reluctant.
A businessman in suit and tie visits Geremia claiming to represent a big company that needs money for a large deal which will result in doubling the money.
The loan amounts to just about everything Geremia owns.
We then see Geremia confronting a customer who hides scared in the bathroom of a dance club.
Geremia talks to Gino about the businessman.
We then see that the gambling granma now lives with Gino, like a prisoner, and we know that Geremia doesn't know: he's looking for her. Gino tells her that he's protecting her.
Geremia sees that the Romanian woman, who refused him, has married a wheelchair-bound invalid who is virtually a vegetable rather than marry him, Geremia.
It's humiliating. Geremia responds by visiting Rosalba, but she as hostile as always.
Geremia and Gino visits the corporation and meets with the boss.
The businessmen show Geremia the signed contracts for the big deal.
Gino advises Geremia to consult a lawyer.
Tesauro visits Geremia again and tells his story: he is the
bastard son of an aristocrat and wants to purchase the aristocratic title that is now up for grab.
We now see that Geremia's apartment overlooks the volleyball court where young women play volleyball.
Rosalba's mother dies. Saverio needs money for the funeral. Geremia approaches Rosalba. Rosalba has no doubt what Geremia wants from her.
Rosalba tells Geremia that she hates her husband, a loser, and that
she is pregnant and she's not sure who is the father (when the baby is born, she'll know: if the baby is a monster, then Geremia is the father).
The granma gambles and wins big. She sends her grandchild to pay the debt.
Geremia tells Rosalba that he's willing to cancel her father's debt if she simply says that she loves him.
Geremia and Gino meet the lawyer at the beach, because the lawyer, disgusted by Geremia's business, doesn't want to meet them in his office.
Suddenly one evening Rosalba shows up at Geremia's apartment and offers herself,
claiming that she feels sorry for him.
Rosalba indirectly convinces him to take the risk with the businessmen.
Geremia's mom is opposed to it and Geremia tells her that he wants to start a
new life with his fiance' Rosalba, and that he'll move her to a nursing home.
Geremia is excited when he delivers the money to the businessmen, but
then he sees Rosalba leave her place and drive to Gino's place, and realizes
that something is going on between them behind his back.
Geremia drives home desperate calling his mother's name.
In the middle of the night
Geremia drives to Rome looking for help from his father. He doesn't find him but runs into three centurions and recognizes them: the two businessmen and the lawyer. They explain that they entertain tourists at night. They were hired by Gino to play the roles. They also mention that Rosalba was with Gino.
It is now clear that Gino and Rosalba stole all his money.
Geremia drives to Gino's ranch and shoots at two people thinking that they are Gino and Rosalba but they are just two mannequins. We see Rosalba bidding goodbye to her father, who tells her that she has no skills and will fail like he did.
Geremia runs home to find his mother dead. Finally, Geremia's father shows up: he silently gives Geremia some money and leaves without saying a word.
Il Divo (2008) is the biopic of an Italian politician, and was followed by
the mediocre This Must Be the Place (2011),
about a retired rock star hunting a Nazi war criminal.
On the surface,
La Grande Bellezza/ The Great Beauty (2013) feels like a version of
Fellini's La Dolce Vita for the age of the eurocrisis.
The peripatetic protagonist is apparently a shallow socialite but in reality
a hermetic tormented soul trying to navigate a labyrinthine Dantesque inferno.
At a deeper level the film feels like an
elegiac and nostalgic gesture for a whole decayed civilization. It deals with
the mortality of individuals as much as it deals with the mortality of
civilizations. It is the combination of history (a ubiquitous presence in
the palaces and churches and squares of the various scenes) and of orgies that
the film acquires its semiotic power. It is a tour de force of interacting
symbols,
the greatest and ultimate one being the juxtaposition of the saint crawling
up towards paradise and of the degenerate socialite sailing away from his
hell.
The loneliness of the protagonist is self-evident as he wanders around his
own city, never truly finding a place to settle in, indifferent to the
spectacles of contemporary culture and instead morbidly fascinated by
deviated behavior (be it the stripper or the saint), and
haunted by the memory of his teenage crush.
The formal element adds another layer of interpretation: the
visual and acting elegance contrasts with the sense of decay, as if
elevating the collapse of civilization and of individual meaning to a role
model of composure and dignity that perhaps the rising civilizations lack.
This is where Sorrentino's elliptic style becomes a transcendental vehicle.
A group of Japanese tourists is visiting Rome when suddenly
one of them collapses to the ground.
There's a big luxurious party going on to celebrate the birthday of an aging
writer, Jep (Egidio). There are gorgeous girls and pole dancers.
There are also lascivious older men and gossiping middle-aged women.
In the morning Jep walks alone through the streets of Rome and is observed by
a child dressed in religious clothes from the gate of a convent.
Jep lives alone with a foreign maidservant in a villa facing the Colosseum.
He watches a naked woman running against the massive pillar of a Roman
aqueduct in front of a silent crowd. It is an action-painting performance. He has been
sent by a magazine to interview the artist, but he quickly realizes that the
artist is a fake and ends up making her cry. His boss at the magazine,
the dwarf Dadina, is nonetheless ecstatic about his satirical expose of the
pretentious artist. They are old friends and she reproaches him for not having
fullfilled his potential as a writer.
One of his friends, Romano, who is eternally
trying to have sex with a gorgeous young girl and also is eternally penniless,
has an idea to write a book about Jep, but Jep declines the offer. However,
Jep has found a business opportunity for his friend.
Jep wrote a book 40 years earlier, "The Human Apparatus", that won a prestigious
literary award, but nothing else.
He migles with toy salesman Lello, silent poet Sebastiano and fabulously dressed
and suntanned women. Romano offers the lead role of his non-existent production
to his current target, a pretentious actress who now wants to become a filmmaker.
They discuss life in Rome. Lello is extremely pessimistic.
Jep agrees that "the best people in Rome are the tourists" but is not quite
as negative. They gossip about common friends of the high society.
Late at night
Jep, now 65 years old, walks with Orietta, a sexy miggle-aged woman from Milan, who claims "being rich" as her job.
They cross one of Rome's most famous squares. Nobody is around.
They make love at her place and she apologizes for not being skilled at sex.
In the morning he takes a walk by himself along the river and meditates about
his own life, spent trying to become the ultimate socialite.
Then suddenly a stranger shows up. His name is Alfredo and he introduces
himself as Elisa's husband. He cries telling Jep that Elisa died.
It starts raining and Alfredo, still crying, begs Jep for help.
Alfredo was married to Elisa for 35 yars. Elisa was Jep's girlfriend in their
youth. When she died, Alfredo found out her diary and realized that she always
and only loved her first love, Jep. And Jep's memory briefly dwells on those
happy days.
A woman is looking for her daughter Francesca. Jep finds her hiding inside
a Renaissance monument and she tells him: "you are nobody".
Meanwhile, Romano, is planning his theatrical masterpiece. Jep visits him
at the room that Romano rents in a student dormitory.
The same friends meet over and over again: Romano worships Jep as one of the
greatest writers ever; Stefania instead, a Marxist intellectual,
thinks that his novel was pretentious and mediocre; Sebastiano listens without
saying a word; Lello is uncomfortable and his wife falls asleep;
Jep accuses Stefania of being false and fragile; she is
53-years old, she came to prominence in her party because she was the
lover of the chief, but she has been a bad mother.
Jep calmly states that all of them live
on the brink of despair.
Stefania leaves speechless and later swims naked in a swimming pool.
Jep walks alone, again, in the streets of Rome. He sees foreign tourists.
He visits a friend he hasn't seen in twenty years, who runs a strip club.
One of the strippers is his daughter Ramona, eternally broke, who still
strips for money at the age of 42. The father is worried for her,
and asks Jep to help her find a rich husband. He meets her briefly,
she's hostile. He feels old and walks out, alone again in the dark streets
of Rome.
Jep attends a session in which a high-tech charlatan administers very
expensive shots to the people who believe in him, while a secretary collects
their fees. Among his customers is even a nun. Jep observes and says nothing.
During a lunch date with Ramona he is approached by
mad young man Andrea, son of his friend and widow Viola.
Back at home he chats with Ramona about her first love and asks her
how she spends her money, but she refuses to answer. There's a mystery in
her life.
The following night Jep is invited at a private party and he shows up with
Ramona, who wears a sexy revealing dress. The host of the rich extravaganza is
Lillo, one of the most celebrated art collectors.
Romano is still trying to seduce the pretentious actress.
They all dance in the fancy gardens. Then a little girl performs an art
piece that consists in randomly and angrily throwing paint on a vast
blank canvas. She's actually a famous artist, and already a millionaire,
despite being still a child. Jep recognizes an old friend,
Stefano, who always carries a case with him. The case contains keys to the
great palaces of Rome. He is live a doorman for the most
aristocratic families. Stefano takes Jep and Ramona to some of the palaces,
vast empty places that contain artistic masterpieces.
At dawn the trio is still walking through surreal gardens.
Then suddenly Jep is alone in an empty lobby, meditating loud on
funerals: a funeral is the ultimate mundane event. Meanwhile, Ramona is
trying different formal dresses. It turns out there is indeed a funeral,
and he was just rehearsing what to do: Viola's son Andrea has committed suicide.
Jep, Romano and other friends carry the coffin out of the church, and Jep
cannot help breaking his own rule of never crying at a funeral, perhaps
aware that soon it will be his turn.
Finally Jep and Ramona have sex. Finally she tells him her secret: she spends
all her money in medicines.
And suddenly she is dead: we see her father crying at a cafe and people
pay him condolences for the loss of his daughter.
Jep visits Arturo, who is a magician and keeps a gyraffe in a giant warehouse.
Romano finds him there and tells him that he decided to quit on the eve of his
premiere: he's going back to his hometown. When Jep looks at the gyraffe
again, it is gone: Arturo has made it disappeared.
Jep visits Alfredo and asks whether Elisa's diary explains why she dumped him
back then. Apparently, the thought has haunted him all the time. Alfredo
doesn't know the answer and has thrown away the diaries.
Alfredo already has a new girl, Polina.
Jep attends yet another classy party with loud thumping music.
Jep is annoyed by the fauna of his parties, but that's his life.
Friends gossip that Viola is donating everything to the church.
A man invies Jep to take a look at his manic exhibition: his father started
taking a picture a day of him, and then he continued. The exhibition is of
those thousands of pictures of him, one per day.
At another party, this time outdoors and in broad daylight, Lello introduces
Jep to a cardinal, who is being asked about a saint. Jep is about to ask him
something about the soul but the cardinal gets distracted by another guest.
Jep dances with Stefania: they are still good friends, despite the argument.
Back in his villa Jep witnesses the arrest of his mysterious neighbor: it
turns out he is one of the most wanted mafia bosses. Before being taken away
the sinister boss discusses the best tailors of Rome and accuses
Jep of being a useless parasite while he, the mafia man, is a
hard-working man.
The 104-year-old saint, who looks like a mummy and is hardly coherent,
arrives at Rome, causing create emotions in the religious people who have
come from all over the world to kiss her hand.
The cardinal announces that he will have dinner with the saint, and the host
will be no less than the writer Jep. The dinner is for a few intimate friends.
The saint, Maria, complains that they make her sleep in a hotel: she is not
used to sleep in a bed! The dwarf Dadina wants Jep to interview the saint,
an old fan of Jep's only novel,
but the saint refuses: poverty is something to be lived, not to be talked
about.
The cardinal, instead, is a vain and mundane being, who loves to talk about
recipes and little else. At the end of the dinner, when the cardinal is about
to leave in his limo, Jep approaches an whispers a question: he wants to
know whether the cardinal is an exorcist. The cardinal gives him his
blessing in Latin and drives away. The saint disappears. They cannot find her
anywhere in the villa's gardens. Jep finds her sleep on the floor of
his bedroom. In the morning she asks him why he never wrote a second book.
He replies that he was looking for the great beauty and he never found it.
She tells him that she only eats roots because they are important.
Then she makes a sound and all the birds fly away.
Then she crawls on her knees up a holy staircase, while Jep is sailing
in the sea and thinks of his first love. Jep has decided to write a new novel.
Youth (2015), his second English-language film, is a philosophical meditation about two elderly men.
The Young Pope (2016) and
its sequel
The New Pope (2019) are TV series.
Loro (2018) is another hallucinatory biopic, this time of media mogul and politician Silvio Berlusconi, an orgy of opulence, corruption and depravity.
È' Stata la Mano di Dio/ The Hand Of God (2021)
is an autobiographical film reminiscent of Fellini’s Amarcord.
|
