Paolo Sorrentino returns to the director’s chair with La Grazia, Italy’s latest potential Oscar contender and film festival darling. The film stars frequent Sorrentino collaborator Toni Servillo as a fictional Italian president serving out the last six months of a successful seven-year tenure. Unlike all their pairings, however, La Grazia is far leaner on the oversexualized themes and on the analyses of an aging old man looking back longingly and lustily on his mediocre life. All of this is a good thing. Taking the place of those tired tropes are nominally more interesting explorations of the crucial decisions we make in life and how they define us. The end result is not as grand as Sorrentino always makes his films to be, but it is at least far more interesting than his prior work.
Servillo plays President Mariano de Santis. He is beloved by his collaborators, including his affable scheduler, his devoted bodyguards, the chief of the military, and even the flirtatious, far younger ambassador from Luxembourg. He has a slightly more complicated relationship with his daughter Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), who also serves as his chief of staff and confidante, his life-long friend and now fashion designer Coco Valori, and the minister of justice and would be successor, Ugo.
But Mariano is a fair, just, and thoughtful man. He was a judge before he was the president, and the worst that can be said about him—delivered with effective drama in the movie’s second act by his daughter—is that he is hopelessly indecisive, always in search of some absolute truth.
Sorrentino’s clever script weaves a limited number of subplots that advance through the last six months of de Santis’ presidency. Two petitions for pardons (“Grazias,” in Italian) land on his desk. One is from a woman who stabbed her abusive husband in his sleep. The other from a man who compassionately helped his mentally ill wife die. A controversial bill regulating euthanasia is also before him, which torments him given his and his country’s fervent Catholicism.
Despite having to make these weighty decisions, de Santis seems more interested in other, seemingly more mundane matters. He is fascinated by an aging Italian astronaut who is spending some time alone in space with little human interaction and no gravity. He is obsessed with discovering the identity of the person with whom his now deceased wife cheated on him over 40 years ago. And he is perennially thinking of her, Aurora, at every chance he gets, including the one little cigarette he allows himself every day strolling the rooftops of the Quirinale, the Roman presidential palace.
Like all Sorrentino films, La Grazia is rich in art direction, particularly for the various rooms of the presidential palace. The cinematography by Daria D’Antonio (who also worked with him in The Hand of God) is as sweeping as it is varied, covering misty Italian landscapes and panoramic shots of Rome at night. Servillo is a stupendous actor and the supporting actors, particularly Milvia Marigliano as the esoteric, eccentric Coco Valori, are stupendous as well.
The weakest part of any Sorrentino film is always, by far, its script. In most of his previous movies, we were asked to care about an inherently self-absorbed, self-obsessed older, creepy man who lusted after women with big breasts and could not accept his own decaying mortality. It was impossible to do so. Sorrentino’s more brilliant side was on display in the satirical political drama, Loro, also starring Servillo, but that time around, as a buffoonish, absurd clown modeled off of greater than life politician Silvio Berlusconi.
It is curious that in this day Sorrentino chose to create a politician who is fair, just, thoughtful, and beloved by all. Is this his new form of nostalgia? Maybe, but the set up is convincing because Servillo is committed to the tortured thoughtfulness that invades the President’s every decision, his every move. He cares deeply about doing the right thing, and has a natural knack for doing so. His imperfections are idiosyncratic and even endearing. His stubbornness and smugness to be expected. It is simply a far more interesting character than the archetype of the old man chasing after naked young girls, perhaps because the former is the rarity today and the latter the norm.
La Grazia, like so many of Sorrentino’s films, clearly sets out to tell us something very profound and meaningful about life. The title evokes not just the pardons, but the concept of “grace,” which the Pope explains to the President as the calmness that comes from knowing that you tried your best to do the best.
It does not quite succeed in telling a story for the ages, of answering age-old questions about humanity, leadership, or even fatherhood. Still, it does create a convincing, sympathetic character through whose heavy and experienced eyes we are given a little modicum of hope that there can be good in the world. This is as refreshing as any film you’d expect from this director, or to come out of a fall film festival ahead of the Oscar season. Italy will surely give it a good luck to try to get itself to the Best International Feature podium once again.
Grade: B+
La Grazia had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and screened at the Telluride Film Festival. Mubi will distribute it in the U.S.
