CANNES 2024 - remote notes

[Chris Knipp]

CELESTE DALLA ;PORTA, STEFANNIA SANDRELLI IN PARTHENOPE

PARTHENOPE (Paolo Sorrentino)

In Competition. Newcomer Celeste Dalla Porta stars in this story tracing the life of a Neapolitan woman as a reflection of the city itself, also featuring Stefania Sandrelli, Gary Oldman and Silvio Orlando, but the director's taste for "baroque VIRTUOSITY" makes the film "too rich to digest," says David Rooney in his HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review. HAND OF GOD, Sorrentino's touching and fun, most personal and best movie, "shimmered with the director’s memories of his youth." But the "deeply personal nature and intimacy of that film are drowned here by ostentation," says Rooney. The titular character (Sandrelli) carries the 8th century BC Greek name for the city of Naples. But the more time we spend with her the more remote she becomes. By Siddhant Adlakha reviewing for VARIETY is a much more favorable view he calls the film "an exquisite treatise on cinematic beauty." She is born in 1959; Celeste Dellla Porta plays her in 1968 when she, her brother, and the maid's son go to Capri in a golden summer that ends abruptly. David Erlich in INDIEWIIRE finds this a "superficial meditation n the relationship between youth and beauty." Sorrentino "is back on his proverbial bullshit with another sprawling flesh parade that’s more consumed with abstract ideals than it is with the stuff of life itself," says Erlich. S. is "a middle-aged man who almost drives himself insane trying to imagine what life would be like as an unbelievably hot woman." Things swirl around through time rathr than tell a story, says sERlich. Parthenope meets the alcoholic, closeted Aierican writer John Cheever (Gary Oldman) and they bond, due to the relief for her of a man not wanting to have sex with her. A24 is releasing the film.


CELESTE DELLA PORTA IN PARTHENOPE