“Red tape is supposed to be slow,” the President of Italy (Tony Servillo) explains to a member of his inner circle. “That’s the idea: to allow people time to think.” But how much time is excessive, and what benefit is there in reflection for a president with only six months remaining in their last term, who appears to have a clinical difficulty in making tough decisions before leaving office?
As far as we can tell at the beginning of Paolo Sorrentino’s unusually calm and non-sexual film “La Grazia,” it seems like a forced Catholic act of penance for the Neapolitan sensual spectacle of last year’s poorly received “ParthenopeReflection is the only activity the unnamed President has engaged in for most of the past seven years. A widowed judge with a calm—perhaps entirely inactive—personality, he convinced the people of Italy that he was the right individual to lead them out of an economic crisis. The President quickly bored the issue into submission and has since spent his time at the Quirinale gazing into the distance, pondering his late wife, Aurora.
The man is so deeply lost in his own thoughts that his nickname at the palace is “Reinforced Concrete.” Indeed, our beloved leader is so burdened by political duties—so overwhelmed by the struggle of how and why to live without love in his life—that he doesn’t even realize hehas a moniker within the palace.
But a storm is approaching to awaken his subconscious, and it hits from multiple directions simultaneously. The President’s daughter and top advisor, Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), wants her father to approve a law allowing euthanasia, despite the Pope’s objections, who might become his successor, Ugo (Massimo Venturiello), advises him to forgive a woman for murdering her abusive husband, even though she is guilty. Meanwhile, his close friend Coco (Milvia Marigliano) mocks him about an affair his wife had 40 years ago, without revealing the identity of Aurora’s lover. This is enough to plunge the old man into an existential crisis, as he soon becomes overwhelmed by the sordid tension that is common in many of Sorrentino’s films: the conflict between the sacred and the profane.
In “The Great Beauty” (along with several of the director’s other films, including this one to some extent), that tension was examined by blending the past with the present against the setting of an everlasting city. With his deeply personal “The Hand of God,Sorrentino used the same method to explore the connection between reality and imagination, as well as the careful balance of staying grounded in both worlds. ‘La Grazia’ offers a more reflective take on the same concept, focusing on the contradictions that can arise in the growing divide between a man’s beliefs and his uncertainties. Throughout this oddly subdued film (a conscious departure from the unrestrained style of modern Italian cinema’s most extravagant filmmaker), this divide appears to expand more behind the camera than it does on screen—and in a much more engaging way.
Sorrentino is unable to resist adding some overly flashy touches — including a few bursts of Proustian techno and a third-act rap about “Metal Gear Solid” — to this otherwise dull depiction of a dull man, yet his choice to limit much of “La Grazia” to the rooms, corridors, and gardens of the Quirinale seems like an act of self-restraint from an artist who no longer believes in the authenticity of his color scheme. So restrained by the director’s typical standards that it almost resembles Bressonian minimalism when contrasted with the “I wonder what life is like for an insanely hot woman?” extravagance of “Parthenope,” Sorrentino’s newest film is the product of someone paralyzed by the gap between their values and their visual style; someone who has spent their whole life searching for a truth that has just slipped away, and is naturally empathetic toward the challenges of trying to find it again in the spotlight.
“La Grazia” strives to make us empathetic towards them as well. The President is a gloomy and uninteresting character, but Servillo’s portrayal is slightly less lifeless than the film itself, and it remains grounded by the genuine ambiguity of his emotions. The President is simultaneously open and closed to everything; he listens to idle gossip with the same interest he gives serious advice from the Pope, and he is just as puzzled by a romantic advance from the beautiful editor of Italian Vogue as he is by the critical decisions regarding pardons he must make. He is both resentful and warm-hearted—wrapped in such immense power that he struggles to move under its weight. He is, as someone describes, suffering from the “burden of sensitivity,” a condition that judges and soldiers hope law and duty will prevent them from having to bear.
Servillo brings authenticity to his character’s lightness through a softness that makes it emotionally moving to see the President rediscover his rhythm, yet “La Grazia” has difficulty standing behind its lead actor. Laden with Sorrentino’s typical symbolism, which feels more awkward and overwhelming than ever within the confines of such an oppressive film (R.I.P. to Elvis the racehorse, who suffers as a result of the President’s hesitation regarding mercy), the movie is simultaneously too unclear and overly directive in portraying the President’s uncertainty.
Sorrentino guides the character along a lengthy and meandering path toward finding peace with ambiguity, yet the indicators are just as evident in theirintentas they are confusing in theircontent, with the mercy rulings that loom over the narrative symbolizing a form of ordinariness that has been absent even from the most extravagant elements of the director’s earlier films. In those more vibrant movies, many of which were filled with a sexual energy so intense that it became appropriately inseparable from the fabric of history and religion, that extravagance was often more of an asset than a drawback. Here, in a stifling drama where the main character has long been resistant to such indulgences, and who resides in his opulent Roman mansion as if he were a prisoner seeking clemency, Sorrentino attempts to find the same excitement in dull skies, bruised egos, and legal discussions.
He doesn’t locate it. Style has consistently served as the medium for his content, and although it’s simple to understand why an exaggerated misfire like “Parthenope” could prompt Sorrentino to tone things down for his upcoming film, it’s amusing that the resulting project ended up being the tale of a man who begins to fall apart due to self-doubt at the peak of his influence. Perhaps bureaucracyismeant to be slow enough to allow people time to contemplate the core of the issues, but a Paolo Sorrentino film isn’t. I think he created “La Grazia” to demonstrate that to himself. That’s the only meaningful aspect.
Grade: C
“La Grazia” made its debut in the Competition section of the 2025 Venice Film Festival. MUBI will handle its distribution in the United States.
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