The common perception is that that Paolo Sorrentino makes lulling eye-bath films that intrigue on a certain level but don’t quite add up to much more than that. But he’s a respected cinema stylist and this, take it or leave, is his signature…immaculate visual compositions, a strictly applied tone of dry irony, understated performances that nonetheless invite curiosity and, if you’re so inclined, a certain scrutiny.
La Grazia, which screened this morning at 8:30am inside the over-refrigerated Sala Darsena, is a stately, decidedly opaque portrait of an aging, white-haired Italian president named Mariano De Santis (longtime Sorrentino collaborator Toni Servillo), his daughter Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), a crusty, combustible old friene (also white-haired) named Coco Valori (Milvia Marigliano) and…oh, God, I’m just dingle-dangling here. As with almost all of Sorrentino’e films I felt a mix of appreciation for hie 2.39:1 compositions as well as distanced and vaguely frustrated. Within ten minutes I knew it would be a tough haul and it was.
I could feel the press audience politely enduring it, sorta kinda working through it (is this a meditation on aging, death, white-haired wigs, obsession, cigarettes?) but waiting for something engaging to happen and getting little satisfaction, at least according to HE standards.
The only concise description I can settle on is “ironically bloodless”. As in mummified, underwhelming, lyrical, stillborn, subdued emotionalism, lemme outta here. But this is what tends to happen when Sorrentino and Servillo pool forces.
And the Sala Darsena climate was really too cold…you’d have to call it assaultive. I buttoned up my black Kooples shirt and hoped for the best, but I was freezing the whole time. The morning’s only genuine pleasure came when La Grazia (i.e., Grace) finally ended and I escaped from the ice-truck atmosphere by walking into the warm Italian sun….”thank you, God…aaaahhh!”
Veteran festival friendo who was at the same screening: “Ahaha yeah they love to crank up the AC in that cinema! Everyone I know brings a jacket to stay warm. It’s nice when you first enter if it’s really hot outside! But since it’s pretty normal warm now it was freezing inside there today.”
