Paolo Sorrentino finds himself in a more restrained mood than usual with a reflective take on the Italian halls of power in La Grazia, his latest collaboration with his muse and regular leading man Toni Servillo. The result, while certainly as gorgeous and stately as one has come to expect from Sorrentino as a stylist, is sadly too slow and scattered, a film of ideas and questions that aren’t quite interesting enough and not lifted up by the glorious bad-taste excesses that have defined so many previous Sorrentino successes.
Here, Servillo plays Mariano De Santis, the ageing President of Italy in the last six months of his term. He’s preoccupied with a variety of concerns; there’s a landmark euthanasia bill he has been asked to sign into law by his daughter and legal expert Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), an Italian astronaut seems mournful on a lonely long-term mission, and his favourite horse is dying. Each scene turns Mariano’s attention to a different matter, as guided by whoever is talking to him at that exact moment, be it his military advisor or the Pope.
This bouncing between priorities creates a weird pacing – each issue takes up only a limited time before being pushed to the backburner again, but the overall rhythm is exceedingly slow. Though Mariano is, of course, well-played by Servillo, who remains effortlessly commanding and funny, his dilemmas and problems are all very internal as he takes his duties and legacy seriously and with grace, which rarely lends itself to much in the way of actually compelling drama. It also doesn’t help that the character of Dorotea is just a complete miss, overly weepy and yet also too hard to know to really care about – the scenes between her and Mariano really do drag on.
La Grazia is at its best when Mariano’s career reckoning gets to meld with Sorrentino doing the same thing himself – both are ageing men with a penchant for fast, thumping music that many would deem too young for them. Mariano’s secret love for rap is both touching and very funny, as is his relationship with his old schoolmate and nationally infamous art critic Coco Valori (Milvia Marigliano), who I could have done with seeing more of, her energy a real bright spot. But these are treasures buried in a pretty uninteresting and sluggish overall package that ends with a sequence aiming at profundity but only reaching ‘faintly ridiculous’.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 